eers for well-boxed ears!"

The big sailor sat upright and listened intently for a few minutes,
before he whispered--

"I can just hear the beetles crawling about among the dead leaves and
things, sir, and seeming to talk to one another in their way, but I
can't hear no niggers coming arter us. Strange thing, arn't it, sir,
that one set o' blacks should take to capturing another set o' blacks
and selling 'em into slavery? Them's a savage lot as that Huggins has
got together, and it strikes me as we shall find 'em reg'lar beggars to
fight if it's all right as Master See-saw says about their manning his
ships. So far as I could make out he's got schooners manned with white
ruffians as well as black blacks, and all as bad as bad can be."

"Yes, Tom," said Murray thoughtfully.

"Nice beauties," continued Tom, "and so far as I can make out, sir,
there was going to be a reg'lar rising to-night, or last night. The
plantation niggers had come to the way of thinking that it was time to
mutiny and kill off them as had brought 'em here, and so that there
Huggins--my word, shouldn't I like to have the job of huggin' him!--got
to know of it and brings his schooners' crews to show 'em they was not
the sort of chaps to carry out a mutiny of that kind."

"Poor wretches, no," said Murray sadly.

"That's right, Mr Murray, sir. Poor wretches it is. You see, sir,
they're a different sort o' nigger altogether. I got to know somehow
from a marchant skipper as traded off the West Coast that there's two
sorts o' tribes there, fighting tribes as fights by nature, and tribes
as 'tisn't their nature to fight at all. Well, sir, these here first
ones makes war upon them as can't fight, carries off all they can as
prisoners, and sells 'em to the slave-traders. Then it comes at last to
a mutiny like this here we've seen, and the poor wretches, as you calls
them, is worse fighters than they was afore, and slaving skippers like
Huggins collects their schooners' crews together and drives the black
mutineers before 'em like a flock o' Baa, baa, black sheep, kills a lot
and frightens a lot more to death, and then things goes on just the same
as before.--Comfortable, sir?"

"No, Tom. Are you?"

"No, sir. But that's about how it is, arn't it?"

"Yes, I believe so, Tom."

"Then it goes on as I said till their medicine man--sort o' priest, I
suppose--stirs 'em to make another try to get the upper hand. Talks a
lot o' that nonsense to '