“Oh! how cold your cheeks are,” said Alice, placing her hands on them, and chafing them gently; then, perceiving that she did not communicate much warmth in that way, she placed her own fair soft cheek against that of the sailor. Suddenly throwing both arms round his neck, she hugged him, and burst into tears.
Bumpus was somewhat taken aback by this unexpected explosion, but, being an affectionate man as well as a rugged one, he had no objection whatever to the peculiar treatment. He allowed the child to sob on his neck as long as she chose, while Corrie stood by with his hands in his pockets, sailor-fashion, and looked on admiringly. As for Poopy, she sat down on a rock a short way off, and began to smile and talk to herself in a manner so utterly idiotical that an ignorant observer would certainly have judged her to be insane.
They were thus agreeably employed when an event occurred which changed the current of their thoughts, and led to consequences of a somewhat serious nature. This event, however, was in itself insignificant. It was nothing more than the sudden appearance of a wild-pig among the bushes close at hand.
Chapter Sixteen.
A wild chase—Hope, disappointment, and despair—The sandal-wood trader outwits the man-of-war.
When the wild-pig, referred to in the last chapter, was first observed, it was standing on the margin of a thicket, from which it had just issued, gazing, with the profoundly philosophical aspect peculiar to that animal, at our four friends, and seeming to entertain doubts as to the propriety of beating an immediate retreat.
Before it had made up its mind on this point, Corrie’s eye alighted on it.
“Hist!” exclaimed he, with a gesture of caution to his companions. “Look there! we’ve had nothing to eat for an awful time; nothing since breakfast on Sunday morning. I feel as if my interior had been amputated. Oh! what a jolly roast that fellow would make if we could only kill him.”