Page:Tudor Jenks--Imaginotions.djvu/241

Rh let you go," he says, after a long think. "But I'd like to taste a sample fust."

"It's a go!" I says, takin' him up right off.

Now, the queer point about these islands was the fact that a humpin' big mount'in rose right in the middle o' the largest one. It was a played-out volcano, and the top of its peak was covered with real snow. That's what put the notion into my mind first off.

That afternoon me and the Cook climbed that peak and fetched down baskets full of snow and chunks of ice. Then we cut two sections of bamboo—one as big as a water-butt and the other not quite so big. There was plenty of salt along shore, and we toted some to the grove.

The Cook he loaded the littler bamboo nearly to the muzzle with goat's milk, and dumped in a couple o' dozen o' turtle-eggs, and sweetened the mess to taste with sugar-cane juice—and then we fixed on a long bamboo pole to the small cask inside, and round I went as if it was a capstan-bar. Round and round, round and round! And round, some more—till my back was breakin' with it.

But it froze stiff; and when we fished it out, it was a kind of oncivilized ice-cream. The Cook he tasted it, in the way o' duty; but he looked worser than when he was homesickest.

"No, thanky," says I, when he offered me a dose; "but don't look blue, Cooky. It 'll go down with these heathens—you see if it don't."

It did. You orter 've seen the chief smile when he got some—why, his grin lit up the landscape.

"Moonface Medicine-man," says he, as he scraped the sides o' the bamboo bowl we gave him, "your chill-puddin' is the finest thing I ever saw! Prepare a hundred calabashes for the Chief of the Succotash Islands, and you shall go free. I will make him knock his head to the dust!"