“You take a just view of things, boy,” returned Pedro, “but you won’t find it difficult to learn. Five minutes looking at what the Indians do will suffice, for they only turn the turtles.”
“How you mean? Turn ’im upside-down, or outside in—w’ich?”
“You’d find it hard to do the last, Quashy. No, you’ve only to turn them over on their backs, and let them lie; that’s all.”
While the negro was thus gathering useful knowledge, the Indians amused themselves in various ways until darkness should call them forth to the business of the hour. Some, with that amazing tendency to improve their personal appearance, which is common alike to civilised and savage, plucked out the little beard with which nature had endowed them by means of tweezers, deeming it no doubt wiser on the whole to pluck up the beard by the roots than to cut it off close thereto, as indeed it was, seeing that the former process did not need regular repetition. Others were still busy with the turtle-egg ragout, unable, apparently to decide whether or not appetite was satisfied. Two somewhat elderly but deeply interested savages whiled away the time with a game of cup-and-ball, turn and turn about, with imperturbable gravity.
This game was different from that of Europe to the extent of being played on precisely opposite principles. It was not he who caught the ball on the point of the sharp stick that won, but he who failed to catch it, for failure was more difficult to achieve than success! The explanation is simple. The handle was a piece of pointed wood, about the thickness of a ramrod, and a yard or so in length. To this, by a piece of string made from fibres of the palm, was attached the ball, which was formed of the skull of a turtle, carefully scraped. There was no “cup” in the game. It was all point, and the great point was to touch the ball a certain number of times without catching it, a somewhat difficult feat to accomplish owing to the dozen or more natural cavities with which the skull-ball was pierced, and into one of which the point was almost always pretty sure to enter.
At last the shades of night descended on the scene, and the Indians, laying aside ragout, tweezers, cup-and-ball, etcetera, went down to the sand-flats, and crouched, kneeled, or squatted under the leafy ajoupas. Of course their visitors accompanied them.
It was a profoundly dark night, for during the first part of it there was no moon, and the stars, although they lent beauty and lustre to the heavens, did not shed much light upon the sands. There is a weird solemnity about such a scene which induces contemplative thought even in the most frivolous, while it moves the religious mind to think more definitely, somehow, of the near presence of the Creator. For some time Lawrence, who crouched in profound silence beside Pedro, almost forgot the object for which he was waiting there. The guide seemed to be in a similarly absent mood, for he remarked at last in a low voice—
“How striking would be the contrasts presented to us constantly by nature, if we were not so thoroughly accustomed to them! Storm, and noise, and war of elements last night,—to-night, silence, calm, and peace! At present, darkness profound,—in half an hour or so the moon will rise, and the sands will be like a sheet of silver. This moment, quiet repose,—a few moments hence, it may be, all will be turmoil and wildest action—that is, if the turtles come.”
“True,” assented Lawrence, “and we may add yet another illustration: at one moment, subjects of contemplation most sublime,—next moment, objects the most ridiculous.”
He pointed as he spoke to Quashy, whose grinning teeth and glaring eyes alone were distinctly visible in the background of ebony. He was creeping on his hands and knees, by way of rendering himself, if possible, less obtrusive.