Edward held out his hand commandingly, and took the greasy small volume that the African passed over to him, with some little amusement and surprise. He didn’t expect, of course, that he would be able to read it, but he thought at least he ought to see what sort of accounts the man kept; they would at anyrate be interesting, as throwing light upon negro ideas and modes of reckoning. He opened the book the negro gave him and turned it over hastily with a languid curiosity. In a second, a curious change came visibly over his startled face, and he uttered sharply a little sudden cry of unaffected surprise and astonishment. ‘Why,’ he said in a strangely altered voice, turning once more to the dogged African, who stood there staring at him in stolid indifference, ‘what on earth is the meaning of this? This is Arabic!’
Rosina Fleming, looking eagerly from in front at the curious characters, saw at once they were the same in type as the writing in the obeah book Delgado had showed her the evening she went to consult him at his hut about Isaac Pourtalès.
Delgado glanced back at the young judge with a face full of rising distrust and latent incredulity. ‘You doan’t can read it, sah?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘It African talk. You doan’t can read it?’
‘Certainly, I can,’ Edward answered with a smile. ‘It’s very beautifully and clearly written, and the entries are in good and accurate Arabic.’ And he read a word or two of the entries aloud, in proof of his ability to decipher at sight the mysterious characters.
Delgado in turn gave a sudden start; and drawing himself up to his full height, with newborn pride and dignity, he burst forth at once into a few sentences in some strange foreign tongue, deep and guttural, addressed apparently, as Tom Dupuy thought, to the new judge in passionate entreaty. But in reality the African was asking Edward Hawthorn, earnestly and in the utmost astonishment, whether it was a fact that he could really and truly speak Arabic.
Edward answered him back in a few words, rapidly spoken, in the fluent colloquial Egyptian dialect which he had learned in London from his Mohammedan teacher, Sheik Abdullah. It was but a short sentence, but it was quite enough to convince Delgado that he did positively understand the entries in the account-book. ‘De Lard be praise!’ the African shouted aloud excitedly. ‘De new judge, him can read de book I keep for me own reckonin’! De Lard be praise! Him gwine to delibber me!’
‘Did ever you see such a farce in your life?’ whispered Tom Dupuy to his uncle Theodore. ‘I don’t believe the fellow understands a single word of it; and I’m sure the gibberish they were talking to one another can’t possibly be part of any kind of human language even in Africa. And yet, after all, I don’t know! The fellow’s a nigger himself, and perhaps he may really have learned from his own people some of their confounded African lingoes. But who on earth would ever have believed, Uncle Theodore, we’d have lived to hear such trash as that talked openly from the very bench in a Queen’s court in the island of Trinidad!’
Edward coloured up again at the few words which he caught accidentally of this ugly monologue; but he only said to the eager African: ‘I cannot speak with you here in Arabic, Delgado; here we must use English only.’
‘Certainly,’ Tom Dupuy suggested aloud—colonial courts are even laxer than English ones. ‘We mustn’t forget, of course, Mr Hawthorn, as you said just now, that this room is a court of justice.’
The young judge turned over the book to conceal his chagrin, and examined it carefully. ‘What are the dates in dispute?’ he asked, turning to the counsel.