“And,” added Peterkin, in an undertone to Makarooroo, “tell them that King Jambai expects that every man will do his duty.”
This remark was received with a shout and a frightful display of white teeth, accompanied by a tremendous flourish of guns, bows, and spears.
There was something quite awful, not to say picturesque, in this displaying of teeth, which took place many times during the course of the above proceedings. You looked upon a sea of black ebony balls, each having two white dots with black centres near the top of it. Suddenly the ebony balls were gashed across, and a sort of storm, as it were, of deep red mingled with pure white swept over the dark cloud of heads before you, and vanished as quickly as it had appeared, only to reappear, however, at the next stroke of humour, or at some “touch of that nature” which is said on very high authority, to “make the whole world kin.”
The proceedings eventually closed with a brief speech from the king, who referred to Peterkin’s remark about each man doing his duty, and said that, “if each man did not do his duty—” Here his majesty paused for a minute, and wrought his countenance into horrible contortions, indicative of the most excruciating agony, and wound up with an emphatic repetition of that dire threat about the unnatural treatment of eyes, heart, liver, and carcass, which had on the previous evening sounded so awful in our ears, and had been treated with such profound indifference by those whom it was specially designed to affect.
“I didn’t know, Jack,” observed Peterkin gravely, as we returned to our hut, “that you were such an out-and-out humbug.”
“You are severe, Peterkin. I scarcely deserve to be called a humbug for acting to the best of my judgment in peculiar circumstances.”
“Peculiar circumstances!” responded Peterkin. “Truly they have received peculiar treatment!”
“That is as it should be,” rejoined Jack; “at any rate, be they peculiar or be they otherwise, our plans are settled and our mode of action fixed, so we must e’en abide the issue.”