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He led on through the thick growth just outside the forest edge, and looking sharply from side to side, soon pitched upon a couple of long, thin, tapering canes, which he hacked off and trimmed neatly, so that they formed a pair of very decent fishing-rods, and he looked at me triumphantly. "Dah!" he said. "But where are the hooks and lines?" Pomp's face was wonderful in its change.
"Wait I get up, I mash all de ole fly eberywhere," he muttered. Tickle tickle tickle. Slip slap. Pomp's hands delivered a couple of blows on his bare skin. Tickle tickle tickle. "You no like me come mash you, eh?" Tickle tickle tickle. "Yah! You great ugly skeeter, you leave lil nigger go sleep." "Buzz buzz hum." Tickle tickle tickle.
It was quite time, for the Indians, encouraged by the cessation of the firing, and seeing that some one was wounded, were coming on well abreast of us. But the first shot warned them, and the two which followed sent them once more back under cover, leaving one of their number, to Pomp's great delight, motionless among the canes. "Ha, ha!" he laughed; "you cotch it dis time, sah.
Now Pomp's eyes would be ready to start out of his head as we neared a corner, or starting off into the forest to avoid some wild or swampy patch, we crept out to the river's bank again, to startle a little flock of ducks which had been preening themselves, and sent feathers like tiny boats floating down the stream. "Plenty of time," I would keep saying.
His sable face was plentifully besprinkled with clotted milk, giving him the appearance of a negro who is coming out white in spots. The floor was swimming in milk. Luckily the dictionary had fallen clear of it, and so escaped. "Is this the way you study?" demanded Frank, as sternly as his sense of the ludicrous plight in which he found Pomp would permit. For once Pomp's ready wit deserted him.
The sun was shining brilliantly over the river; now it began to shine in the wood all over Pomp's smooth black skin, out of his dark eyes, and off his white teeth, as he shouldered the piece, now the very embodiment of pride.
Nothing ever hurt Pomp's feelings more than that term, which seemed to him the very extreme of reviling, and always went straight to his heart.
O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things, That draws oblivion's curtain over Kings, Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not, Their names without a Record are forgot, Their parts, their ports, their pomp's all laid in th' dust, Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape time's rust; But he whose name is grav'd in the white stone Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.
But I was not swimming alone. Pomp's black head was close by me, and his voice rose in a sobbing howl as, shivering with horror, he kept on "Oh, swim fass, Mass' George; swim fass, Mass' George, 'fore de 'gator catch us. Oh, swim fass, Mass' George; swim fass, Mass' George!
"Pomp see um crawl 'long de groun' like 'gator," he said. "Dah one, two, tick, nineteen, twenty." I gazed intently over the fence, but could only see the dark ground; but Pomp's warning was too valuable to be trifled with. He had proved himself now, and I hurried to where my father stood ready with twenty of our men, and told him.
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