In a little while he opened his eyes and noticed me.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, faintly, trying to sit up. Bill caught his head and held it, while Gull passed his arm under him.
“Trying to quit the expedition,” said Yankee Dan, bluffly. “You were trying to leave us, my boy, but this fellow, Heywood, here, nabbed you in time, and swam in to the boat with you. Otherwise you’d ’a’ been drowned, an’ that’s a fact. You’d ’a’ been drowned sure.”
Hicks looked at me seriously for some moments and then spoke:
“It’s hard to owe one’s life to a fool, but here’s my hand, Heywood,” said he, with a faint smile.
“It’s as hard to acknowledge the favour from one, sir,” I answered, with some little feeling, but then I remembered the time at Funchal, and I smiled and held out my hand, which he grasped firmly, and rose to his feet.
Sir John Hicks was a man of rather unsavoury reputation, but he was not a man who would be gross enough to forget.
CHAPTER XXXI.
I MEET CORTELLI
While the trader, Mr. Gull, and Hicks were ashore, there was no chance whatever of communicating any of my suspicions concerning Martin and Shannon. Just what these rascals intended to do was certainly a matter of doubt, and, after all, the talk had been so characteristic of the Scot that I feared I was taking it too seriously to give it a thought.
We tramped over the loose sand to the factory, a couple of miles inland, and the heat of the marsh was awful. Hicks, who had hardly recovered from the accident of the morning, had difficulty in keeping up, for his head was still giddy from the effects of the blow he had received upon it. The black fellows, who had sighted our barque before daylight, had thought nothing of a run to the beach, and they went ahead at a great rate along the jungle path, caring neither for briars, spines, or any of the various prickling things that make even a well-shod man hesitate before treading on them. They were a tall and powerful set of men, all armed with old flint-lock muskets of ancient pattern; doubtless some of them had been used in the first war between the States and England. We finally arrived and were ready for business. The compound, or slave corral, was an immense enclosure completely out of sight from the beach, and away from the prying eyes of any cruiser that might be prowling along the coast. Felado Cortelli, the half-breed Italian slaver, whose presence had cursed the West African coast for years, was in charge, and he came forth to meet us. Our lack of arms seemed to give him amusement, but when he heard how we had been rolled over in the surf, he laughed loudly.