d got up and threw more wood on the glowing fire. "Not Mulla-mulgar's
friends. Nod's friends not hate Oomgar." Up sprang the flames, hissing
and crackling.

The sailor grinned. "Lor' bless ye, my son; you talks wonnerful
hoity-toity; but in _my_ country they would clap ye into a cage."

"Cage?" said Nod.

"Ay, in a stinking cage, with iron bars, for the rabble to jeer at. What
would the monkeys do with a white man, an Oomgar, if they cotched 'n?"

"In my father Seelem's hut over there," said Nod, waving his long hand
towards the Sulemn[=a]gar, "Oomgar's bones hanged click, click, click in
the wind."

Battle stared. "They hates us, eh? Picks us clean!"

Nod looked at him gravely. "Mulla-mulgar--me--not hate Oomgar. All
Munza"--he lifted his brows--"ay! he kill and eat, eat, eat, same as
leopard, same as Jaccatray."

Battle frowned. "It's tit for tat, my son. I kills Roses, or Roses kills
me. Not a Jack-All that howls moon up over yonder that wouldn't say
grace for a picking. But apes and monkeys, no; not even a warty old
drumming Pongo that's twice as ugly as his own shadow in the glass. I
never did burn powder 'gainst a monkey yet. What's more," said Battle,
"who's to know but we was all what you calls Oomgars once? Good as.
You've just come down in the world, that's all. And who's to blame ye?
No barbers, no ships, no larnin', no nothing. Breeches?--One pair, my
son, to half a million, as far as Andy ever set eyes on. Maybe you come
from that wicked King Pharaoh over in Egypt there. Maybe you was one of
the plagues, and scuttled off with all the fleas." He grinned
cheerfully. Nod watched his changing face, but what he said now he could
not understand.

"There's just one thing, Master Mulgar," went on Battle solemnly. "Kill
or not kill, hairy as hairy, or bald as a round-shot, God made us every
one. And speakin' comfortable-like, 'twixt you and me, just as my old
mother taught me years gone by, I planks me down on my knees like any
babby this very hour gone by, while you was sliding in your shoes, and
said me prayers out loud. I'm getting mortal sick of being lonesome. Not
that I blames _you_, my son. You're better company than fifty million
parakeets, and seven-and-seventy Mullagoes of blackamoors."

Nod stared gravely. "Oomgar talk; Nod unnerstand--no." He sorrowfully
shook his head.

"My case all over," said Battle. "Andy unnerstand--no. But there, we'll
off to England, my son, soon as ever this mortal fr