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Patsy clung to the old man's sturdy arm, and certainly Kennedy's bachelor heart beat the kindlier, if not the faster, for the pressure. He was a most reassuring confidant and never took a hopeless view of anything. "There's more ways o' killing a cat than choking her wi' cream!" he was in the habit of saying. "The craw doesna bigg his nest wi' yae strae!"
We found that Johnny Spratt had got some water boiling to make tea, and Tommy Bigg had collected some shells, while the blacks had brought in some cocoa-nuts and several other tropical fruits and roots whose names I do not remember. "Wait till turtle come, then plenty supper," they observed.
The body, I knew, would attract the lions, so I signed to Bigg to get a hole dug near the spot, that it might serve as a rifle-pit for us. He and I took up our post there, while the natives hid themselves away in the surrounding bush to watch my proceedings. I had not long to wait before some jackals came screeching up to partake of the banquet they had scented far off.
We advanced boldly, as if we were confident of meeting with a friendly reception. As we drew nearer, Bigg began to shout out all the titles he could think of, to make it appear that I was some very wonderful person. I looked about, meantime, eagerly for Alfred.
It seemed an age, however, before the natives retired to their huts, and I was alone with Bigg and Solon. Still longer after that did it seem before, while I was watching eagerly at the door, that I saw a figure creeping towards the hut. I had to hold Solon down, for he seemed inclined to fly out and bark.
The captain and mates, except Mr Henley, bullied the men, and the men bullied the boys, and the boys bullied each other, and teased the dumb animals, the pigs, and the goats, and the fowls, and a monkey the weakest, or the best natured, as usual, going to the wall. The worst treated was a little fellow Tommy Bigg by name.
The liberality of Mr Bigg had not been lost upon her: freely she had received freely she gave. What was good must, because it was good, be divided with her neighbour. It was a lawless act. As soon as the benediction was spoken, the laird slipped away, but as he left the seat, Miss Horn heard him murmur "Eh, the bonny man! the bonny man!" He could hardly have meant the deacon.
Just as we were emerging from a wood, Bigg touched my shoulder and pointed to several black figures with calabashes on their heads, some three or four hundred yards off; across an open glade which lay before us. In another moment we should have been discovered. I signed to Solon to keep behind me, and we turned on one side, skirting the border of the forest to avoid them.
When I heard the name of Thomas Bigg, I looked at the man very hard, to see if I could discover any likeness between him and Tommy, for I could not help thinking that he might possibly be Tommy's father, who was supposed to have been lost at sea. I waited till the seaman was sent forward, and then I followed him.
I did not see him, and I began to fear that he was not there, or that he might be ill, or perhaps, worse than all, had sunk under the climate and the labour he had to perform. The people crowded round us, and the chief made his appearance, and I saw Bigg pointing to my lion-skin robe, and talking away very vehemently.
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