The Madman and the Pirate. R. M. Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ oh, no! the good Lord will never forsake him. He will certainly deliver his soul from sin and death; but God sometimes sees fit to allow the bodies of His children to suffer and die. It may be so now.”

      “Yes, mother, but also it may not be so now. Let us take a hopeful view, and do what we can to find out—to find—to—”

      Poor Orlando broke down here, laid his head on his little mother’s shoulder, and wept for his mind had suddenly run itself blank. What was there to find out? what could they do? Nothing, absolutely nothing, except pray; and they did that fervently.

      Then Orley went out to consult again with his friends. Alas! there was no other outlet for their grief, save prayer and consultation, for action was, in the circumstances, impossible.

      “Bin t’ink, t’inkin’ horroble hard all last night. Couldn’ sleep a wink,” said Ebony one day, some weeks after the return of Orlando, when, according to custom, he and the native missionary and his wife, with the chiefs Tomeo and Buttchee, assembled for a consultation in the palm-grove.

      “What have you been thinking about?” asked Orley.

      “Yous fadder, ob course.”

      “Of course,” repeated the boy, “but what have you been thinking about him—anything new?”

      “Not zackly noo,” returned the negro, with a very earnest look, “but ole t’oughts turned in a noo d’rection. Sit down, Tomeo, an’ I will tell you—an’ try to forgit yous hat if poss’ble. It’s ’xtroarnar good lookin’, a’most as much good lookin’ as yousself, so you got no occashin to be always t’inkin’ about it.”

      We may remark here that both Tomeo and Buttchee understood a little of Ebony’s English, though they could not speak a word. The reader will understand, therefore, that when we put words in their mouths we only give a free translation of their language. In like manner Ebony understood a little of the Ratinga tongue, but could not speak much of it, and Waroonga, who himself spoke uncommonly bad, though fluent, English, interpreted when necessary.

      “Well, you mus’ know,” said Ebony, “dat jus before I goes to bed las’ night I heat a little too much supper—”

      “You doos that every night” interrupted Buttchee, with a grin.

      Ebony ignored the interruption, and continued—

      “So, you see, I dream berry bad—mos’ drefful dreams! Yes. Well, what I dream was dis. I see Massa Zeppa forced by de pierits to walk de plank—”

      “What’s that?” asked Tomeo.

      Waroonga looked at Ebony for an explanation, and then translated—

      “When pirates want to kill people they sometimes tie up their eyes, and bind their hands, and make them walk along a plank stickin’ over the ship’s side, till they fall off the end of it into the sea, where they are left to drown.”

      Tomeo looked at Buttchee with a grin and nodded, as though he thought the mode of execution rather a good one; then, recollecting suddenly that any mode of slaying innocent men was inconsistent with his character as a convert to Christianity, he cast a glance of awful solemnity at Waroonga, and tried to look penitent.

      “Well, hims walk de plank like a man,” continued Ebony, “hims dood eberyting like a man. An’ w’en hims topple into de sea hims give sitch a most awful wriggle dat his bonds bu’sted. But hims berry sly, was Massa Zeppa—amazin’ sly. I t’ought him lie on’s back zif him be dead. Jest move a leetle to look like drownin’, an’ w’en he long way astern, he slew round, off wid de hanky fro hims eyes an’ larf to hisseff like one o’clock. Den he swum’d to a island an’ git ashore, and climb up de rocks, an’ sit down—an’—an’—dat’s all.”

      “What! be that all?” asked Waroonga.

      “Dat’s all,” repeated the negro. “I no dream no more arter dat, ’cause I was woked by a fly what hab hoed up my nose, an’ kep’ bumblin’ in it like steam inside ob a kittle.”

      “Well, Ebony,” asked Orlando, “what conclusions do you draw from that dream?”

      “I di’nt draw no kungklooshins from it ’cos I dunno what de are. Nebber hab notin’ to do wid what I don’ understan’. But what I was t’ink was dis: in de days ob old, some time after Adam an’ Eve was born, a sartin king, called Fair-ho, or some sitch name (Waroonga there knows all about him) had a dream, that siven swine came up—”

      “Kine, Ebony—not swine,” interrupted the missionary, with a good-humoured smile, “which is all the same as cows.”

      “Well, den, siven fat cows come up out ob a ribber, an’ hoed slap at siven thin cows—mis’rable skinny critters that—”

      “All wrong, Ebony,” again interrupted Waroonga. “It’s just the other way. The skinny ones went at the fat ones.”

      “Well, ob course you must be right,” returned the negro, humbly, “though I’d have ’spected it was t’other way. But I s’pose the skinny ones was so hungry that the fat ones hadn’t a chance wid ’em. However, it don’t matter. What I was goin’ to say was that a good man, called Joseph, went to Fair-ho an’ ’splained all his dream to him. Now, if Joseph could do dat, why shouldn’t Waroonga ’splain my dream to me?”

      “Because I’s not Joseph, Ebony, an you’re not Pharoah,” returned Waroonga promptly.

      Tomeo and Buttchee turned looks of inquiry on Ebony as if to say, “What d’ye say to that, you nigger?” But the nigger said nothing for some moments. He seemed not to have viewed the matter in that light.

      “Well, I don’no,” he said at last with a deep sigh, “I t’ought I’d get hold ob suthin’ when I kitch hold ob dat dream. But, I do b’lieve myself, dat part of it means dat Zeppa hims git on an island, anyhow.”

      “If my dear father got upon anything, it must have been an island,” said Orlando sadly.

      “That’s troo,” remarked Mrs Waroonga. “Keep your mouth shut, my da’lin’.”

      She referred to her brown baby, which she placed with some violence on her knee. It is well to remark here that little Zariffa had been supplied with a coal-scuttle bonnet proportioned to her size, made by her mother out of native straw, and that she did not wear anything else in the way of costume.

      After Ebony’s dream had been thoroughly discussed in all its bearings, and viewed in every possible point of relation to their great sorrow, the council adjourned, as usual, to various duties about the flourishing little village, and Orlando went to lay the result before his mother, who, although she could not believe these deliberations would end in anything practical, found it impossible, nevertheless, to resist the influence of so much faith and strong hopefulness, so that she was somewhat comforted, as it were, in spite of herself. Time flew by, and upwards of three years elapsed without anything happening at Ratinga Island to throw a single ray of light on the fate of the lost man.

      During that period, however, much that was interesting and encouraging occurred to comfort the heart of the native missionary and the sorrowing Marie Zeppa. In the first place they received several visits from the mission-vessel, with small supplies of such luxuries as sugar, tea, and coffee for the body, and, for the spirit, a few СКАЧАТЬ