“All right, sir, I won’t.”
“An’ take a couple o’ the men into the bush with you in case of accidents.”
“Ay ay, sir,” responded Mark, waving his hand in acknowledgment.
And that was the last that Mark Breezy and the captain of the Eastern Star saw of each other for many a day.
“Who will go with me?” asked Mark, when the boat touched the shore.
“Me, massa,” eagerly answered the negro cook, who had gone ashore in the hope of being able to get some fresh vegetables from the natives if any were to be found living there. “Seems to me dere’s no black mans here, so may’s well try de woods for wild wegibles.”
“No no, Ebony,” said the first mate, who had charge of the boat, “you’ll be sure to desert if we let you go—unless we send Hockins to look after you. He’s the only man that can keep you in order.”
“Well, I’ll take Hockins also,” said Mark, “you heard the captain say I was to have two men. Will you go, Hockins?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the seaman, sedately, but with a wrinkle or two on his visage which proved that the proposal was quite to his taste.
All the men of the boat’s crew were armed either with cutlass or carbine—in some cases with both; for although the natives were understood to be friendly at that part of the coast it was deemed prudent to be prepared for the reverse. Thus John Hockins carried a cutlass in his belt, but no fire-arm, and the young doctor had his double-barrelled gun, with powder-flask and shot-belt, but Ebony—being a free-and-easy, jovial sort of nigger—went unarmed, saying he “didn’t want to carry no harms, seein’ he would need all harms he had to carry back de fresh wegibles wid.”