Dora shuddered and clung closer to her companion. Hanbury straightened his back and squared his shoulders, and whispered: "Don't be afraid, Dora." He was tall and powerful, and solid-looking for a man of six-and-twenty. He could have answered for any man among the spectators. The Negro stood half-a-head taller, and looked powerful and stubborn. Hanbury surveyed him curiously and finished his examination by thinking, "I shouldn't mind taking him on. I dare say he knows how to use his fists." He himself had taken lessons with the gloves, and was a creditable amateur in the art. Young amateur boxers always look on every strange man as a possible antagonist. Hanbury felt great pleasure in his own physical prowess when he thought of the hand of the young girl on his arm and looked down at the pale olive face and into the confiding hazel eyes. "Don't be afraid." he murmured.
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen," the Negro went on, "I grind my own corn with my own mill-stones," showing his fine, large, white teeth. "Men in Parliament are celebrated for their jaw, so am I. I am like them all round. With my teeth and my mouth and my jaw, I get my living. Here is my stock in trade," patting his chin and cheek and teeth, "and I never can sell them that puts faith in me, as the Parliament men do, for these here things of mine would be no use to anyone else, and I couldn't sell 'em the same as votes if I would." He made a hideous grimace, at which there was another laugh mingled with a cheer.
This laugh brought Mr. Williams, landlord of the Hanover, to his door, and finally into the street. He glanced at the Negro and the crowd with benignant toleration, then turning his eyes upwards he saw Leigh at the window, whither he had been attracted by the noise of the crowd. The window was open, and Leigh was leaning out and watching the group below.
Williams called out to the hunchback, "His trumpeter isn't dead," nodding to the Negro. "Come down Mr. Leigh, and see the fun." A man who could afford to give good English money for a dead Egyptian prince would surely be interested in a living African black, whom he could see and hear for nothing.
Leigh hesitated for a moment, then called out, "All right," and disappeared from the window.
Meanwhile the athlete was continuing his harangue. Such artistes are prodigal of personal history, reticent of the feats they intend to perform. This one told the audience his name was William Sampson, but that the President of the United States, King Ja-Ja, and the Emperor of China, called him Black Sam, when he dined with them in private. "The ladies, who are to a man fond of me, call me Black Sam too. You may laugh, but you won't see me blush when you laugh at me. You don't find this Nigger so green as to blush because he's popular with the ladies. Not me! I was born at midnight, in the Black Country near Brummagem, that accounts for my dark complexion, and I'm in mourning for my great grandfather, Adam, which accounts for my being called Sam, and also for my nobby head of hair."
He paused awhile, and walked round the two cubes of stone which he had placed on the ground. He surveyed them as though they were living animals of priceless value. Then he returned to his first position facing Welbeck Place, and resumed:
"I carry them stones there about with me to prove to any man, who won't take my word for it, that I am the strongest jawed man in all the world. Ladies and gentlemen, when I was last in America, I went out West. You have often heard of the Rocky Mountains--there," pointing to the stones, "there they are. Now I am going to prove my words to you."
"What will he do with the stones, Jack?" whispered Dora, with some apprehension of danger.
"Eat them," answered Hanbury in a whisper. "Didn't you hear him say so?"