Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/264

 *dated with a deep measure of iced rum-and-water, lit his pipe, played with the children, stared at his black hostess in unmitigated astonishment, and prepared himself to answer the questions it was obvious the Quadroon was burning to put.

Célandine hovered restlessly about the room, fixing her bright black eyes upon the seaman with an eager, inquiring glance, that she withdrew hastily when she thought herself observed, and thereby driving into a state of abject terror the large sable hostess, whose pity for the victim, as she believed him, at last overcame her fear of the Quadroon, and impelled her to whisper in Slap-Jack's ear—

"Obi-woman! bruxa, buckra-massa, bruxa! Mefiez-vous!—Ojo-malo. No drinkee for drunkee! Look out! Gare!" A warning utterly incomprehensible to its object, who winked at her calmly over his tumbler, while he drank with exceeding relish the friendly mother's health, and that of her thriving black progeny.

There is nothing like a woman's tact to wind the secrets out of a man's bosom, gradually, insensibly, and by much the same smooth, delicate process as the spinning of flax off a distaff. With a few observations rather than questions, a few allusions artfully put, Célandine drew from Slap-Jack an account of his early years, and an explanation, offered with a certain pride, of the manner in which he became a seaman. When he told her how he had made his escape while a mere child from his protector, whom he described as "the chap wot wanted to bind him 'prentice to a saw-*bones," he was startled to see the Quadroon's shining black eyes full of tears. He consoled her in his own rough, good-*humoured way.

"What odds did it make after all," argued Slap-Jack, helping himself liberally to the rum-and-water, "when I was out of my bed by sunrise and down to the waterside to get aboard-ship in the British Channel, hours afore he was up, and so Westward-ho! and away? Don't ye take on about it. A sailor I would be, and a sailor I am. You ask the skipper if I'm not. He knows my rating I should think, and whether I'm worth my salt or no. Don't ye take on so, mother, I say!"