"You see I'm not free to speak out all I knows," he said. "But surely it's enough to say that my friends have not failed me; that I found them waitin' there with a small boat, so light that they had dragged it up an' concealed it among the rocks, an' that I'd have bin on my way to old England at this good hour if it hadn't bin for poor Miss Sommers, whom we couldn't think of desartin'." "Then she refused to go with you?" said Foster. "Refused! I should think she did! Nothing, she said, would indooce her to leave Algiers while her father was in it. One o' my mates was for forcing her into the boat, an' carryin' her off, willin' or not willin', but I stood out agin' him, as I'd done enough o' that to the poor thing already. Then she axed me to come along here an' ax Peter the Great if he knowed anything about her father. `But I don't know Peter the Great,' says I, `nor where he lives.' `Go to Sally,' says she, `an' you'll get all the information you need.' `But I'll never get the length o' Sally without being nabbed,' says I. `Oh!' says she, `no fear o' that. Just you let me make a nigger of you. I always keep the stuff about me in my pocket, for I so often cry it off that I need to renew it frequently.' An' with that she out with a parcel o' black stuff and made me into a nigger before you could say Jack Robinson. Fort'nately, I've got a pretty fat lump of a nose of my own, an' my lips are pretty thick by natur', so that with a little what you may call hard poutin' when I had to pass guards, janissaries, an' such like, I managed to get to where Missis Lilly an' Sally lived, an' they sent me on here. An' now the question is, what's to be done, for it's quite clear that my mates an' me can't remain for ever hidin' among the rocks. We must be off; an' I want to know, are we to take this poor gal with us, or are we to leave her behind, an', if so, what are her friends a-goin' to do for her?" "There's no fear of your friends going off without you, I suppose?" "Well, as they risked their precious lives to rescue me, it ain't likely," returned the seaman. "Would it not be well to keep Brown here till Ben-Ahmed returns?" asked Foster, turning to Peter the Great. The negro knitted his brows and looked vacantly up through the leafy roof of the bower, as if in profound meditation. Some of the brighter stars were beginning to twinkle in the darkening sky by that time, and one of them seemed to wink at him encouragingly, for he suddenly turned to the middy with all the energy of his nature, exclaiming, "I's got it!" and brought his great palm down on his greater thigh with a resounding slap. "If it's in your breeches pocket you must have squashed it, then!" said Brown--referring to the slap. "Anyhow, if you've got it, hold on to it an' let's hear what it is." "No--not now. All in good time. Patience, my frind, is a virtoo wuf cultivation--"