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Updated: May 31, 2025
In obedience to this impulse, it suddenly swerved from its circular course, and, heading towards the spot where Ben Brace, with Lilly Lalee clinging to his shoulder, was performing his shorter revolutions, it made a reckless and determined rush for the centre, equally regardless of the admonition of its brace of monitors and the cold steel of the Coromantee, gleaming clear under the water through which it would have to make its way.
Nor was there at that moment any explanation either offered or asked; for, as soon as the Catamaran had settled into her proper position, and Snowball had got aboard, the eyes of her whole crew, those of the Coromantee among the rest, became once more directed to that which had occupied their attention previous to receiving the shock, the strange behaviour of the frigate-bird.
Whether the reasoning of the Coromantee was correct or only sophistical, the facts were the same. Two forms were in the sky, outlined against the back ground of cerulean blue.
It may be remembered with what feelings of alarm they first listened to the voices of Snowball and Lilly Lalee, heard in a similar manner during the darkness of the night, and with what suspicious caution they had made their approach to the Coromantee in the middle of his casks.
It was nothing more than he had prepared himself to expect, when the Coromantee, almost as soon as he had steadied himself astride of the water-cask, shouted, in a loud voice "The Cat'maran! the Cat'maran!" "Where?" cried the sailor. "To leuart?" "Dead in dat same direcshun." "How fur, cookey? how fur?"
Absorbed in the contemplation of the combat between Snowball and the shark, he had hitherto remained unobservant of a circumstance of the most alarming character, one that threatened not only the destruction of the Coromantee, but Ben Brace as well, and Lilly Lalee, and in time little William himself, in short, of the whole party.
Of course this reasoning was purely negative, and might not have gone far towards convincing the Coromantee, whose fatalist tendencies at times strongly inclined him to inaction. But his comrade backed it by another argument, of a more positive kind, to which Snowball more readily assented.
In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of an hour's time.
At all events, Snowball's plan was suited to the circumstances in which its contriver was placed; and perhaps it was the only one which the circumstances would have allowed. Unlike other inventors, the Coromantee proclaimed the plan of his invention as soon as he had conceived it. "Wha' for?" he asked, as the idea shaped itself in his skull, "wha' for we trouble 'bout a pot fo' burn de oil?"
And Ben, after this burst of enthusiasm, for a moment indulged his admiration in silence. "Dat's all berry likely, berry likely," was the rejoinder of the Coromantee. "I know what he did next," said Ben, continuing the thread of his conjectures. "Wha' you tink, Massa Brace?" "He tuk in sail. I don't know why he didn't do it sooner; for I called to him to do that, an' he must ha' heerd me.
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