Counting the one
who was hit by a spear and who had fallen out of the boat, it meant that
Falk had lost three dead, and if blood on the deck was any sign, others
must have been badly slashed. In other words, our party was, numerically,
almost the equal of his. Considering the man from Boston as on our side, we
were seven to their eight. The lantern that we now lighted revealed more of
the gruesome spectacle, and it made me feel sick to see that both the man
from Boston and I were covered from head to foot with the gore in which we
had been rolling; but to the natives the sight was a stupendous triumph;
and the cook, when I next saw him, was walking down the deck, looking at
the face of one dead man after another.
By and by he came to me where, overcome by a wave of nausea, I had sat down
on the deck with my back against the bulwark. "Dey ain't none of 'em
Kipping," he said grimly. Then he saw my bleeding shoulder and instantly
got down beside me. "You jest let dis yeh ol' nigger took a hand," he
cried. "Ah's gwine fix you all up. You jest come along o' me!" And helping
me to my feet, he led me to the galley, where once more he was supreme and
lawful master.
In no time at all he had a kettle of water on the stove, in which the coals
of a good fire still lingered, and with a clean cloth he washed my wound so
gently that I scarcely could believe his great, coarse hands were actually
at work on me.
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