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But Cherea was so much afraid for Minucianus, lest he should light upon the Germans now they were in their fury, that he went and spike to every one of the soldiers, and prayed them to take care of his preservation, and made himself great inquiry about him, lest he should have been slain.
It yields by distillation an oil termed "oil of spike," or, to distinguish it from oil of L. stæchas, "true oil of spike." It is darker in color than the oil of L. vera, and much less grateful in odor, reminding one of turpentine and rancid coker nut oil. It is used by painters on porcelain, and in the manufacture of varnishes. It is often largely admixed with essence of turpentine.
Spike shoved his clutch in and crawled forward along the curb, leaving the inky shadows of the far end of the station, and emerging finally into the effulgence of the arc at the corner of Cypress Street. Once again the door of the Union Station opened. This time Spike took a professional interest in the person who stepped uncertainly out into the night.
Then once more he fell to pacing; and as he walked that weary space, up and down, he muttered to himself with words we cannot understand. After a certain time, Rrisa came silently back, sliding into the soft dusk of that room almost like a wraith. He bore a silver tray with a hook-nosed coffee-pot of chased metal. The cover of this coffee-pot rose into a tall, minaret-like spike.
The more they reasoned on the matter, the more unlikely it seemed to them that Spike could be really carrying a cargo of flour from New York to Key West, in the expectation of disposing of it to the United States' contractors, and the more out of the way did he seem to be in running through the Mona Passage.
Upon this there were about a dozen of these spines pointing upward, and upon each spike was impaled a ruby-throat! The little creatures were dead, of course, but they were neither torn nor even much ruffled in their plumage. They were all placed back upwards, and as neatly spitted upon the thorns as if they had been put there by human hands.
"Fear?" exclaimed Spike, a little startled, and a good deal surprised at this straight-forward question "Fear, Miss Rose! You do not think we are afraid, though there are many reasons why we do not wish to be spoken by certain craft that are hovering about. In the first place, you know it is war time I suppose you know, Madam Budd, that America is at war with Mexico?"
Thus, lost in her own new sorrow, she spoke seldom, sighed often, and sang not at all; often sitting at her sewing machine with hands strangely idle and gaze abstracted. Spike, watching furtively, had seen her eyes brim over with great, slow-falling tears; more than once he had heard her bitter weeping in the dawn.
The nightmare horror of the situation had affected him much as a sudden blow in the parts about the waistcoat might have done. But, now, as Spike would have said, he caught up with his breath. The smirk faded slowly from the other's face as he listened. Not even in the Bowery, full as it was of candid friends, had he listened to such a trenchant summing-up of his mental and moral deficiencies.
Five or six minutes would suffice for him; and if he were seen going up the brig's side, it would be easy for him to maintain that he had come ashore in the boat. No one took such precise note of what was going on; as to be able to contradict him; and as to Spike and the men with him, they would probably never hear anything about it.
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