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Load that ber'l agin. I guess we'll git a lot o' 'm afore we gins in. Cuss the luck! that gun, Tar-guts! Ef I only had that leetle piece hyur! 'Ee've got six shots, have 'ee? Good! 'Ee mout chock up the cave wi' their karkidges afore they kin reach us. It ur a great weepun, an' no mistakes. I seed the cap use it. Lor'! how he made it tell on them niggers i' the shanty!
Two black gins in brief garments a loin cloth and a villainously dirty pyjama-jacket each were sitting near him, languidly killing the mosquitoes which settled on their bare legs. These were Maggie and Lucy, but they had degenerated with their surroundings.
The holes of the creek were shaded by large Terminalias, and by a white gum, with slightly drooping foliage of a pleasing green colour. We followed the creek down, and soon came again to Ironstone ridges. I had sent Charley forward to look for water, and, when he joined us again, he told me that there was a water-hole, but that natives, for the greater part gins, were encamped on it.
Having parted with Maggie and Lucy, they pushed onwards, the old man beguiling the time with disquisitions on the horse-hunting capabilities of his gins, whom he seemed really sorry to leave. As they got near Pike's, he became more restless than ever. "See here, Mister," he said at last, "my wife's here, I expect, and if she gets wind of this, I'll never get rid of her.
Me come more better country blenty everything. Father belonga me sit down. He got two good young fella gins. My word, good one gins. He say 'Hello! you come up? You sit down here altogether. Two fella good gins belonga you!" This was paradise! "I would admonish the world that all persons, indifferently, are not fit for this sort of diversion."
He heard a quavering whine that grew louder until it became a shriek, and then fell away into silence, but his senses were slow in connecting it with one of the Tiptonville cotton gins. He heard a voice, curiously human, and having forgotten the old hay-burner river ferry, worried to think that he should imagine someone was driving a mule team on the Mississippi.
They left the gins at the blacks' camp, which they chanced on by a riverside. The camp was a primitive affair, a few rude shelters made by bending bamboo sticks together and covering them with strips of paper bark. Here the sable wariors sat and smoked all day long, tobacco being their only civilised possession.
Indeed, it seems a rule for the women to follow the conquering party, as a matter of course; so that on the return of an expedition into the interior of New Holland, the friendly and neighbouring natives, being informed that some of the distant and hostile people had been shot, only observed, "Stupid white fellows! why did you not bring away the gins?"
His eyes turned to the banks, swept the sandbars, gazed into the coiling waters alongside, and he whispered names of places as he passed them landings, bars, crossings, bends, and even the plantations and log cuttings. He named the three cotton gins in Tiptonville, and stared at the ferry below town with a sidelong leer.
At the side of the crowd was a small mob of blacks with their dogs, spears, 'possum rugs and all complete. They and their gins and pickaninnies appeared to take great notice of the whole thing. One tallish gin, darker than the others, and with her hair tucked under an old bonnet, wrapped her 'possum cloak closely round her shoulders and pushed up close to us.
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