"I was the more amused with this account of the ugly rascal's adventures that I remembered two or three of the occasions he mentioned, and he told them pretty exactly so far as I had to do with them. As for the fetish-man's curious nut, and that extraordinary mushroom of his, why 'ten to one,' thought I, 'but all the while the fellow never once touched a piece of _soap_!' which, no doubt, had as much to do with it as anything besides. Somehow or other, notwithstanding, I had taken almost a fancy to the villain--such a rough sample of mankind he was, with his uncouth grumpy voice, and his huge black beard; and he gave the story in a cool, scornful sort of way that was laughable in itself. 'So, my lad,' I thought, 'it seems you and I have met twice before; but if you play any of your tricks this time, Master Harry, I hope you've found your match'; and certainly, if I had fancied my gentleman was in the slaver's hold that time off the African coast, I'd have 'lubberrated' him with a vengeance. "'I say, mates,' said he again, with a sulky kind of importance, to those of the watch who had gathered round during the last half of his yarn, 'there's three things I hates--an' good reason!' 'What be's they, Harry?' asked the rest. 'One's a Yankee,' said he, 'an' be blowed to him; the second's a slaver; and the third is--I carn't abide a nigger, nohow. But d' ye see, there's one thing I _likes_----' Here eight bells struck out, and up tumbled the watch below, with Jacobs' hearty face amongst them: so I made my way aft, and, of course, missed hearing what that said delightful thing might be, which this tarry Æsop approved of so much. CHAPTER XII "While I was listening, I had scarcely noticed, that within the last few minutes a light air had begun to play aloft among the higher canvas, a faint cat's-paw came ruffling here and there a patch of the water, till by this time the Indiaman was answering her wheel again, and moving slowly ahead, as the breeze came down and crept out to the leeches of her sails, with a sluggish lifting of her heavy fore-course. The men were all below at breakfast, forward, and, of course, at that hour the poop above me was quite a Babel of idlers' voices; while I looked into the compass and watched the ship's head falling gradually off from north-east-by-north, near which it had stuck pretty close since daybreak. The sun was brought before her opposite beam, and such a perfect gush of hazy white light shot from that quarter over the larboard bulwarks, that thereaway, in fact, there might have been a fleet of ships, or a knot of islands, and we none the wiser, as you couldn't look into it at all.