Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/265

 But the Quadroon was weeping without concealment now.

"Call me that again!" she exclaimed, sobbing convulsively. "Call me that again! I have not been called mother for so long. Hush!" she added, starting up, and laying her hand forcibly on his lips. "Not another word. Fool! Idiot that I am! Not another word. She can hear us. She can understand;" and Célandine darted a furious glance at the busy negress, which caused that poor woman to shake like a jelly down to her mis-*shapen black heels.

Slap-Jack felt considerably puzzled. His private opinion, as he afterwards confided to his messmates, was, that the old lady not being drunk, must be mad—a cheerful view, which was indeed confirmed by what occurred immediately afterwards.

In struggling to keep her hand upon his mouth, she had turned back the deep, open collar of his blue shirt till his brawny neck was exposed nearly to the shoulder. Espying on that neck a certain white mark, contrasting with the ruddy weather-browned skin, she gave a half-stifled shriek, like that with which a dumb animal expresses its rapture of recognition; and taking the man's head in her arms, pressed it to her bosom, rocking herself to and fro, while she wept and murmured over him with an inexplicable tenderness, by which he was at once astonished and alarmed.

For a few moments, and while the negress's back was turned, she held him tight, but released him when the other re-entered the room, exacting from him a solemn promise that he would meet her again at an indicated place, and adding that she would then confide to him matters in which, like herself, he was deeply interested, but which must be kept religiously secret so long as he remained in the island.

Slap-jack, after he had finished his rum-and-water, rejoined his comrades, a more thoughtful man than he had left them. To their jests and inquiries he returned vague and inconclusive answers, causing Bottle-Jack to stare at him in solemn wonder, and affording Smoke-Jack another illustration of his theory as to the wilfulness of feminine steerage in a sea-way.