ee, with a grin.

Ebony ignored the interruption, and continued--

"So, you see, I dream berry bad--mos' drefful dreams! Yes. Well, what
I dream was dis. I see Massa Zeppa forced by de pierits to walk de
plank--"

"What's that?" asked Tomeo.

Waroonga looked at Ebony for an explanation, and then translated--

"When pirates want to kill people they sometimes tie up their eyes, and
bind their hands, and make them walk along a plank stickin' over the
ship's side, till they fall off the end of it into the sea, where they
are left to drown."

Tomeo looked at Buttchee with a grin and nodded, as though he thought
the mode of execution rather a good one; then, recollecting suddenly
that any mode of slaying innocent men was inconsistent with his
character as a convert to Christianity, he cast a glance of awful
solemnity at Waroonga, and tried to look penitent.

"Well, hims walk de plank like a man," continued Ebony, "hims dood
eberyting like a man. An' w'en hims topple into de sea hims give sitch
a most awful wriggle dat his bonds bu'sted. But hims berry sly, was
Massa Zeppa--amazin' sly. I t'ought him lie on's back zif him be dead.
Jest move a leetle to look like drownin', an' w'en he long way astern,
he slew round, off wid de hanky fro hims eyes an' larf to hisseff like
one o'clock. Den he swum'd to a island an' git ashore, and climb up de
rocks, an' sit down--an'--an'--dat's all."

"What! be that all?" asked Waroonga.

"Dat's all," repeated the negro. "I no dream no more arter dat, 'cause
I was woked by a fly what hab hoed up my nose, an' kep' bumblin' in it
like steam inside ob a kittle."

"Well, Ebony," asked Orlando, "what conclusions do you draw from that
dream?"

"I di'nt draw no kungklooshins from it 'cos I dunno what de are. Nebber
hab notin' to do wid what I don' understan'. But what I was t'ink was
dis: in de days ob old, some time after Adam an' Eve was born, a sartin
king, called Fair-ho, or some sitch name (Waroonga there knows all about
him) had a dream, that siven swine came up--"

"Kine, Ebony--not swine," interrupted the missionary, with a
good-humoured smile, "which is all the same as cows."

"Well, den, siven fat cows come up out ob a ribber, an' hoed slap at
siven thin cows--mis'rable skinny critters that--"

"All wrong, Ebony," again interrupted Waroonga. "It's just the other
way. The skinny ones went at the fat ones."

"Well, ob course you must be right," returned the negro,