CHAPTER IV.
THE SKIPPER MAKES A PRAYER.
The girl's strange behaviour did not surprise me. In the short time that she had been among us I had become quite used to her vagaries. I have spoken of her as a savage, but only as one would call any human being a savage, either black or white, who had attacked another as viciously as this girl had attacked Cynthia. The girl was not a savage in the common acceptation of the term. She was of mixed blood, a French octoroon, probably from the country districts; at least so the simple chemisette and short skirt which comprised her costume would imply. Her hair was black and wavy, her lips red, her teeth white and small. She was plump and prettily formed, and looked in reality like a girl of eighteen, though we afterward learned that she was just then in her fourteenth year.
A large tree, which had fallen across the stream up near the cliff, formed a bridge over the deep little river. To this the Haïtienne flew, and, springing upon its trunk, she crossed to the other side as if she had been a rope-walker. I watched her as she fled down the beach. I did not care when she returned to us, or, indeed, whether she came back at all, but the pangs of hunger were beginning to tell upon me, and the Bo's'n was the only one who could assuage them. So I turned from contemplating the flying figure of the girl and gazed in the opposite direction. The Bo's'n, too, was still running, as if pursued by some horrid nightmare. I watched until I saw that he had abandoned his pace, then ran slowly, then settled down into a walk, looking furtively over his shoulder the while, and finally stopped. I beckoned to him, but he shook his head. I started up the beach to meet him, but he began to run to the westward again. I returned to Cynthia.
"Give that fellow up as a bad job," said I. "Did you ever cook anything, Miss Archer?"
"I can make calves'-foot jelly," said Cynthia, "and oley-koeks. I always made those for Christmas dinner at home."
I looked around the shore scrutinizingly.
"I don't see any little calf sticking up his feet to be chopped off—except the Minion," I added, after a moment's survey of the sloping sand, where the cabin boy was disporting himself upon his back with his feet in the air. "I suppose oily what-you-call-'ems need butter and eggs——"
"As I haven't the necessary materials, suppose I cook some pork," said Cynthia. "I suppose"—looking quietly at me—"it isn't so very difficult. You will have to build a fire, you know, and wash the frying-pan and cut the pork."
"And lay it in the spider and let it cook itself," said I. "I am sorry to put you to so much trouble."