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Wondering what might be the meaning of this, I went on deck, but neither Mendouca nor Pedro was visible, and I did not choose to question the mate a surly, hang-dog, cut-throat-looking scoundrel, who had chosen to manifest an implacable hostility to myself from the moment that our eyes had first met.
The crew had all been sent below, but we soon roused them up, twenty in number; fierce, cut-throat-looking villains most of them were. The between-decks we found crowded with slaves; and we found, when we came to count them, that there were three hundred men, women, and children, so closely packed that they could not lie down even to rest.
Those who were there around him seemed to be the outcasts of the world, exactly those whom he would have objected to meet, unarmed, on the roads of Greece or among the hills of Armenia; cut-throat-looking wretches, with close-shaven heads, dirty beards, and angry eyes; men clothed in skins, or huge skin-like-looking cloaks, filthy, foul, alive with vermin, reeking with garlic, abominable to an Englishman.
"An ugly-looking big brig, which has a cut they don't like about her," was the answer. "When we were out here the last time, we sighted just such another chap. A hundred or more cut-throat-looking fellows were dancing on her decks, and we had every expectation that they would lay us aboard, when a man-of-war hove in sight, and she prudently cut her stick.
After driving through what might have been an Eastern Sebastopol, from the amount of ruin about, we reached a cut-throat-looking archway; and the coachman, here pointing to a dirty board, above his head, triumphantly announced the "Punch Gur!" Hot and thirsty, we got out, with visions of rest and cooling sherbets, too soon to be dispelled.
It was far from pleasant to see a number of cut-throat-looking fellows parading up and down before us with their hands on the hilts of their long knives, with which they kept playing as if anxious to try their temper in our bodies. Captain Helfrich stood all the time with folded arms leaning against the bulwarks, and all we could do was to imitate his example.
The cut-throat-looking Arabs, with their venerable captain, appeared to be very uneasy in their minds, not knowing what was to be done with them; perhaps supposing that their captors were carrying them out to sea to drown in deep water. They were evidently much relieved when, a point some little way down the river being reached, Adair intimated to them that they were forthwith to be put on shore.
Charlie Brooke ventured at this point to open his eye-lids the smallest possible bit, so that any one looking at him would have failed to observe any motion in them. The little slit however, admitted the whole scene to the retina, and he perceived that ten of the most cut-throat-looking men conceivable were seated in a semicircle in the act of receiving portions from the big pot into tin plates.
We had agreed to keep one candle burning, with the further precaution that we should sleep and tie through the night; for it was a cut-throat-looking place, and the countenance of the ordinary Servian is not reassuring. It fell to my lot to have the first watch, and I lay awake staring at the roof, no great height above us.
Going through the dirty streets, they reached the Sultan's tumbledown-looking palace, where His Majesty was seen seated in a half-open apartment facing the street, furnished with divans and piles of mats. He was surrounded by Arabs of rank, many of them dressed in rich costumes, talking familiarly with him, while his bodyguard of Beloch soldiers, cut-throat-looking individuals, lounged outside.
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