“Moses,” he said, when the professor had raised himself to the seventh heaven by means of tobacco fumes, “come with me. I want to have a talk.”
“Das what I’s allers wantin’, Massa Nadgel; talkin’s my strong point, if I hab a strong point at all.”
They went together to the edge of a cliff on the hill-top, whence they could see an almost illimitable stretch of tropical wilderness bathed in a glorious flood of moonlight, and sat down.
On a neighbouring cliff, which was crowned with a mass of grasses and shrubs, a small monkey also sat down, on a fallen branch, and watched them with pathetic interest, tempered, it would seem, by cutaneous irritation.
“Moses, I am sorely in need of advice,” said Nigel, turning suddenly to his companion with ill-suppressed excitement.
“Well, Massa Nadgel, you does look like it, but I’m sorry I ain’t a doctor. P’r’aps de purfesser would help you better nor—”
“You misunderstand me. Can you keep a secret, Moses?”
“I kin try—if—if he’s not too diffikilt to keep.”
“Well, then; listen.”
The negro opened his eyes and his mouth as if these were the chief orifices for the entrance of sound, and advanced an ear. The distant monkey, observing, apparently, that some unusual communication was about to be made, also stretched out its little head, cocked an ear, and suspended its other operations.