Battle frowned. "It's tit for tat, my son. I kills Roses, or Roses kills me. Not a Jack-All that howls moon up over yonder that wouldn't say grace for a picking. But apes and monkeys, no; not even a warty old drumming Pongo that's twice as ugly as his own shadow in the glass. I never did burn powder 'gainst a monkey yet. What's more," said Battle, "who's to know but we was all what you calls Oomgars once? Good as. You've just come down in the world, that's all. And who's to blame ye? No barbers, no ships, no larnin', no nothing. Breeches?—One pair, my son, to half a million, as far as Andy ever set eyes on. Maybe you come from that wicked King Pharaoh over in Egypt there. Maybe you was one of the plagues, and scuttled off with all the fleas." He grinned cheerfully. Nod watched his changing face, but what he said now he could not understand.
"There's just one thing, Master Mulgar," went on Battle solemnly. "Kill or not kill, hairy as hairy, or bald as a round-shot, God made us every one. And speakin' comfortable-like, 'twixt you and me, just as my old mother taught me years gone by, I planks me down on my knees like any babby this very hour gone by, while you was sliding in your shoes, and said me prayers out loud. I'm getting mortal sick of being lonesome. Not that I blames you, my son. You're better company than fifty million parakeets, and seven-and-seventy Mullagoes of blackamoors."
Nod stared gravely. "Oomgar talk; Nod unnerstand—no." He sorrowfully shook his head.
"My case all over," said Battle. "Andy unnerstand—no. But there, we'll off to England, my son, soon as ever this mortal frost breaks. Years and years have I been in this here dismal Munza. Man-eaters and Ephelantoes, Portingals and blackamoors, chased and harassed up and down, and never a spark of frost seen, unless on the Snowy Mountains. What wouldn't I give for a sight of Plymouth now!"
He rose and stretched himself. Facing him, across the unstirring darkness of the forest shone palely the great new-risen moon. "'Hi, hi, up she rises,'" said Battle, staring over. "'But what's to be done with a shipwrecked sailor?' Nobody knows, but who can't tell us. Now, just one stave, Nod Mulgar, afore we both turns in. Give us 'Cherry-trees.' No, maybe I'll pipe ye one of Andy's Own, and you shall jine in, same as t'other." Nod climbed up and stood on his log, his hands clasped behind his neck, and stamped softly with his feet in time, while Battle, after tuning up his great gourd—or Juddie, as he called it—plucked the sounding strings. And soon the Oomgar's voice burst out so loud and fearless that the prowling panthers paused with cowering head and twitching ears, and the Jaccatrays out of the shadows lifted their cringing eyes up to the moon, dolefully listening. And when the last two lines of each verse had been sung, Battle plucked more loudly at his strings, and Nod joined in.
"Once and there was a young sailor, yeo ho!
And he sailèd out over the say
For the isles where pink coral and palm-branches blow,
And the fire-flies turn night into day,
Yeo ho!
And the fire-flies turn night into day.
"But the Dolphin went down in a tempest, yeo ho!
And with three forsook sailors ashore,
The Portingals took him where sugar-canes grow,
Their slave for to be evermore,
Yeo ho!
Their slave for to be evermore.
"With his musket for mother and brother, yeo ho!
He warred wi' the Cannibals drear,
In forests where panthers pad soft to and fro,
And the Pongo shakes noonday with fear,
Yeo ho!
And the Pongo shakes noonday with fear.
"Now lean with long travail, all wasted with woe,
With a monkey for messmate and friend,
He sits 'neath the Cross in the cankering snow,
And waits for his sorrowful end,
Yeo ho!
And waits for his sorrowful end."