Chapter 23

Yet I well remember
The favours of these men: were they not mine?
Did they not sometimes cry, all hail! to me?
So Judas did to Christ: but he, in twelve
Found truth in all but one; I in twelve thousand none.

Willis.

While the captain and Joyce were digesting their plans Mike proceeded
on an errand of peculiar delicacy with which he had been entrusted by
Robert Willoughby. The report that he had returned flew through the
dwellings, and many were the hearty greetings and shakings of the hand
that the honest fellow had to undergo from the Plinys and Smashes, ere
he was at liberty to set about the execution of this trust. The
wenches, in particular, having ascertained that Mike had not broken his
fast, insisted on his having a comfortable meal, in a sort of servants'
hall, before they would consent to his quitting their sight. As the
county Leitrim-man was singularly ready with a knife and fork, he made
no very determined opposition, and, in a few minutes, he was hard at
work, discussing a cold ham, with the other collaterals of a
substantial American breakfast.

The blacks, the Smashes inclusive, had been seriously alarmed at the
appearance of the invading party. Between them and the whole family of
red-men there existed a sort of innate dislike; an antipathy that
originated in colour, and wool, and habits, and was in no degree
lessened by apprehensions on the score of scalps.

"How you look, ole Plin, widout wool?" Big Smash had reproachfully
remarked, not five minutes before Mike made his appearance in the
kitchen, in answer to some apologetic observation of her husband, as to
the intentions of the savages being less hostile than he had at first
imagined; "why you say dey _no_ murder, and steal and set fire,
when you know dey's Injin! Natur' be natur'; and dat I hear dominie
Woods say t'ree time one Sunday. What 'e dominie say _often_, he
mean, and dere no use in saying dey don't come to do harm."

As Great Smash was an oracle in her own set, there was no gainsaying
her dogmas, and Pliny the elder was obliged to succumb. But the
presence of Mike, one who was understood to have been out, _near_,
if not actually _in_, the enemy's camp, and a great favourite in
the bargain, was a circumstance likely to revive the discourse. In
fact, all the negroes, crowded into the hall, as soon as the Irishman
was seated at table, one or two eager to talk, the rest as eager to
listen.

"How near you been to sabbage, Michael?" demanded Big Smash, her two
large coal-black eyes seeming to open in a degree proportioned to her
interest in the answer.

"I wint as nigh as there was occasion, Smash, and that was nigher than
the likes of yer husband