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Fidus Achates ran over to me at the end of the first act to say that all things were going pretty well; though he confessed to the titter in the house upon Miss Pritchard's first appearance, dressed exactly like an Indian princess. "Why," says he, "would you have had Caractacus painted blue like an ancient Briton, or Bonduca with nothing but a cow-skin?"
The youngest girl was so defective in her lesson that not one word could be extracted from her, even by the cow-skin; nothing but piercing shrieks, enough to make my heart bleed, could the poor victim utter. Irritated by the child's want of capacity to repeat by rote what she could not understand, the old man darted from his seat, and struck her senseless to the ground. I could bear no more.
There were pueblos, Indios manzos, clad in their ungraceful tilmas, and rather serving than associating with those around them. There were mulattoes, too, and negroes of a jetty blackness from the plantations of Louisiana, who had exchanged for this free, roving life the twisted "cow-skin" of the overseer.
Three stones and a hole form the fireplace, near which sleep the children, kids, and lambs: there being no chimney, the interior is black with soot. The cow-skin couches are suspended during the day, like arms and other articles which suffer from rats and white ants, by loops of cord to the sides.
After this ceremony had been also repeated by the familiar, Chongi then took the gourd and twig, and sprinkled the contents all over us; retired to the Uganga, or magic house a very diminutive hut sprinkled pombe over it; and, finally, spreading a cow-skin under a tree, bade us sit, and gave us a jorum of pombe, making many apologies that he could not show us more hospitality, as famine had reduced his stores.
While Little John from underneath his bushy covert had much ado to keep from roaring aloud in pure joy. Finally Robin saw his chance and brought a full arm blow straight down upon the other's head with a force that would have felled a bullock. But Arthur's trebled cow-skin cap here stood him in good stead: the blow glanced off without doing more than stunning him.
Manufactured in the country of the Nishadas, irresistible, incapable of being broken, whose is this sword of polished blade in a scabbard of cow-skin? Whose is this beautiful and long sword, sable in hue as the sky, mounted with gold, well-tempered, and cased in a sheath of goat-skin?
She sits with outstretched arms as they walk about with her, and all the rest clap their hands and, stopping before each hut, sing pretty airs, some beating time on their little skirts of cow-skin, and others making a curious humming sound between the songs.
Arrived there, the negroes at once commenced beating a couple of large drums, half as tall as themselves, made something like a beer-barrel, covered on the top with a cow-skin stretched tightly over, by way of a drum-head. This drumming was an announcement of our arrival, intended as a mark of regal respect.
Be ye the lad what downed Bud Eberly at the meetin' over on the Cow-skin las' spring?" he questioned, with faintly aroused interest. I blushed like a school-girl, for this unexpected reference was not wholly to my liking, though the man's intentions were evidently most kind. "He bullied me until I could take no more," I answered, doubtfully; "yet I hurt him more seriously than I meant."
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