You ought
to have seen the nigger! He fetched a howl and bolted like--like
the dog in 'Tom Sawyer,' when he sat on the what's-its-name
beetle. He yelped as he ran, and the corpse went on sneezing. I
could see it had been sarkied. (That's a sort of gum-poison,
pater, which attacks the nerve centres. Our chief medical officer
is writing a monograph about it.) So Imam Din and I emptied out
the corpse one time, with my shaving soap and trade gunpowder,
and hot water.
"I'd seen a case of sarkie before; so when the skin peeled off
his feet, and he stopped sneezing, I knew he'd live. He was bad,
though; lay like a log for a week while Imam Din and I massaged
the paralysis out of him. Then he told us he was a Hajji--had
been three times to Mecca--come in from French Africa, and that
he'd met the nigger by the wayside--just like a case of thuggee,
in India--and the nigger had poisoned him. That seemed reasonable
enough by what I knew of Coast niggers."
"You believed him?" said his father keenly.
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