CHAPTER XVI.
THE COOPER "ROMANCES."—INCIDENTS.—BYRON'S ISLAND.
"What did you value your life at, when the cannibals were holding their powwow over you, the other day to Dominica?" asked the cooper, who was whittling a charge for his pipe from a long twist of "nigger-head."
"At a very low figure," said I. "At one time I'd have been glad to sell out at a nominal price. But do you really suppose they are cannibals?"
"Of course they are," returned the cooper. "Probably one of the points they were disputing about was, how it was best to cook and dress you."
"But Peter says they had no intention of killing us at all, and as he understands the language, I suppose he knows best. But I confess, that in spite of his assurances, I felt anything but safe; for at any moment some impulsive child of nature might have driven a lance through me, just to end the controversy."
"And don't you see," said Fisher, "that Peter's view of the matter would partially spoil the poetry of Cooper's yarn, that he means to found on the facts?"
"Of course," said the cooper. "There's not half as much romance in knowing that you are to be cooped up in a bamboo calaboose, and ransomed for old Revolutionary muskets, as there is in the other view of the matter."
"And what may be your other view of the matter?" I asked.