They were particularly
interested in what I ate. One day, after I had been "boot-topping" the
sloop with a composition of coal-tar and other stuff, and while I was
taking my dinner, with the luxury of blackberry jam, I heard a
commotion, and then a yell and a stampede, as the children ran away
yelling: "The captain is eating coal-tar! The captain is eating
coal-tar!" But they soon found out that this same "coal-tar" was very
good to eat, and that I had brought a quantity of it. One day when I
was spreading a sea-biscuit thick with it for a wide-awake youngster,
I heard them whisper, "Chut-chut!" meaning that a shark had bitten my
hand, which they observed was lame. Thenceforth they regarded me as a
hero, and I had not fingers enough for the little bright-eyed tots
that wanted to cling to them and follow me about. Before this, when I
held out my hand and said, "Come!" they would shy off for the nearest
house, and say, "Dingin" ("It's cold"), or "Ujan" ("It's going to
rain"). But it was now accepted that I was not the returned spirit of
the lost black, and I had plenty of friends about the island, rain or
shine.
One day after this, when I tried to haul the sloop and found her fast
in the sand, the children all clapped their hands and cried that a
_kpeting_ (crab) was holding her by the keel; and little Ophelia, ten
or twelve years of age, wrote in the _Spray's_ log-book:
A hundred men with might and main
On the windlass hove, yeo ho!
The cable only came in twain;
The ship she would not go;
For, child, to tell the strangest thing,
The keel was held by a great kpeting.
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