"What's the palaver about?" growled some of the Badgers and Buckeyes; "open the chests, and you'll see what harm's done."
"D'ye ye hear, Sambo?" cried the Yankee with the same immovable countenance; "you're to hold yer tongue, the gentlemen say; they're tired of yer noise, and no wonder. What's the use of boohooin' away at that rate? Helps you nothin'; you desarve what you've got. I'll thank you for your long knife, Mister. That'll do. That opens it, cuts in like rael steel; better it should be into hard word than soft flesh. There they are, then, and not broken; onhurt, without a spot or a crack. Sing praises to the Lord! psalms and hymns of rejoicin'—not a phial broke, nor a box smashed! Praised be the Lord! I say ag'in. Since they are safe, it don't matter if twenty shoulder-blades and ankle-bones are put out. Verily the mercy of Heaven shall be made manifest, and that by the means of a feeble vessel, Jared Bundle by name. Down with ye, Sambo—down with ye, I say!—Your shoulder and your dingy hide shall be made whole, and your black bones shall be comforted!"
Not a muscle of the Yankee's face moved; he preserved the grave and solemn appearance of a man to whom a sacred trust has been confided, and who is fully penetrated with the importance of his mission. Once or twice, however, I observed him give a keen but almost imperceptible glance around him, as if to observe the effect of his eloquence upon his auditors.
"Down with you, Sambo!" he repeated to the negro, who had got himself into a sort of sitting posture upon the deck.
"Down, down!" cried the men of Kentucky.
"Down!" those of Missouri and Ohio.
"Be quick about it!" shouted an Illinois sucker.
"Let's see the Yankee's wonderful cure!" exclaimed a hunter from Oregon.
And amidst shouts and exclamations and laughter, poor Sambo was seized by half a dozen of their bear's fists, and stretched out upon a heap of coffee-bags like a pig that's going to be killed.
"Boe! Boe!" clamoured the negro at the top of his voice.