The salt junk was placed on the table, and we all began our operations with great zeal; the biscuit vanished in bushelsful,—the boys were happy as princes, the smallest, little Binnacle, becoming talkative from the comfortable meal, and the exhilarating effects of a stiffish glass of grog, when who should walk into the cabin but Sergeant Quacco himself? He had diversified his loveliness after a most remarkable manner; first, he was naked as the day his mother bore him, all to his waistcloth of red serge. He had sandals of coarse untanned leather on his feet, a cross belt of black leather slung over his right shoulder, which supported a bayonet without a sheath, and into which the rust had eaten—the whole affair being much honeycombed—while his broad chest and brawny arms were tatooed in gunpowder or indigo, with the most fantastic shapes. On his head he wore an old military shacko, the brass ornaments cruelly tarnished, and carried a long wand of wild cane in his hand, of the thickness of my thumb, and about ten feet high, the top of which kept rasp, rasping, slantingly against the roof of the low cabin as he spoke.
"Hillo, steward, what do you mean by this, that you let these savages turn us out of house and home in this manner?" cried the fourth lieutenant.—Then addressing the interloper—"My fine fellow, you are a little off your cruising ground, so be making yourself scarce—Bolt—vanish—get on deck with you, or I shall be after swearing a very ugly oath."
"Massa, massa," quoth the man, "easy for you chuck me oberboard—nobody can say you shan't—but only listen leetle bit, and I know you yousef shall say my hargument good for someting."
There was a pause, during which he civilly waited for Lanyard to speak, when finding he had no inclination to do so, he continued—
"Ah I know, and I older man den you, massa; people never should trike when dem blood is up, unless in de case of fight for Kin Shorge. Ah, alway wait, massa, until you see and consider of de reason of de ting."
The good-hearted fellow was rebuked before the poor black savage; I suppose the latter saw it in his face, for all at once he gathered courage, and approached close to him, and placing his large black paw—I noticed the palm was a dingy white—on his arm between the elbow and wrist, he looked up into Dick's face,—
"Massa, you have not got one wife?"
"No I have not."
"But, massa, you can fancy yourself to hab one wife."
Lanyard nodded.