He carried a formidable knife, in addition to the long musket of
which he had been deprived, and his principal garment was the coarse
mantle of camel's hair, that served equally for cap, coat and robe. His
wild dark eyes gleamed, as Captain Truck passed the lamp before his face,
and it was sufficiently apparent that he fancied a very serious
misfortune had befallen him. As any verbal communication was out of the
question, some abortive attempts were essayed by the two mariners to make
themselves understood by signs, which, like some men's reasoning, produced
results exactly contrary to what had been expected.
"Perhaps the poor fellow fancies we mean to eat him, Leach," observed the
captain, after trying his skill in pantomime for some time without
success; "and he has some grounds for the idea, as he was felled like an
ox that is bound to the kitchen. Try and let the miserable wretch
understand, at least, that we are not cannibals."
Hereupon the mate commenced an expressive pantomime, which described, with
sufficient clearness, the process of skinning, cutting up, cooking, and
eating the carcass of the Arab, with the humane intention of throwing a
negative over the whole proceeding, by a strong sign of dissent at the
close; but there are no proper substitutes for the little monosyllables of
"yes" and "no," and the meaning of the interpreter got to be so confounded
that the captain himself was mystified.
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