“There’s no fear of your friends going off without you, I suppose?”
“Well, as they risked their precious lives to rescue me, it ain’t likely,” returned the seaman.
“Would it not be well to keep Brown here till Ben-Ahmed returns?” asked Foster, turning to Peter the Great.
The negro knitted his brows and looked vacantly up through the leafy roof of the bower, as if in profound meditation. Some of the brighter stars were beginning to twinkle in the darkening sky by that time, and one of them seemed to wink at him encouragingly, for he suddenly turned to the middy with all the energy of his nature, exclaiming, “I’s got it!” and brought his great palm down on his greater thigh with a resounding slap.
“If it’s in your breeches pocket you must have squashed it, then!” said Brown—referring to the slap. “Anyhow, if you’ve got it, hold on to it an’ let’s hear what it is.”
“No—not now. All in good time. Patience, my frind, is a virtoo wuf cultivation—”
“You needn’t go for to tell that to a Bagnio slave like me, Mister Peter. Your greatness might have made you aware o’ that,” returned the sailor quietly.
An eye-shutting grin was Peter’s reply to this, and further converse was stopped by the sound of clattering hoofs.
“Massa!” exclaimed the negro, listening. “Das good. No time lost. Come wid me, you sham nigger, an’ I’s gib you somet’ing to tickle you stummik. You go an’ look arter de hoss, Geo’ge.”
While the middy ran to the gate to receive his master, Peter the Great led the sham nigger to the culinary regions, where, in a sequestered corner, he supplied him with a bowl containing a savoury compound of chicken and rice.