Page:The land of enchantment (1907, Cassell).djvu/88



“No, no, Master Charles; sweeps are just very long oars. For the rest, ‘twas as the captain had said—in each ‘pray-you’ were a couple of hundred or more raging savages, as black as your boots, and nearly as naked as when they were born. They had squinny eyes and hair like door-mats, and were armed with nasty, long, sharp knives. We could see the steaming stew-pots aboard them as plain as a pike-staff ready to boil us down to meat jelly.”

Charlie greedily devoured these appetising details. “Oh, Ben, weren’t you awfully frightened?”

“Well, Master Charles, for a moment my heart was in my mouth, and so I won’t deceive you. I heard the cabin-boy a-blubbering, and the skipper himself looked white about the gills; and then a most remarkable thing happened. But where’s that tobacco got to, I wonder?” Ben began a laborious search, first for his coil of pig- tail, and then for his ancient knife, Charlie meanwhile fuming with impatience. With great deliberation a chunk was cut off, eyed with approval, and appropriated in the usual manner.