In addition to their ornaments of bead and shell and
bone, their pierced ears and nostrils were burdened with safety-pins,
wire nails, metal hair-pins, rusty iron handles of cooking utensils, and
the patent keys for opening corned beef tins. Some wore penknives
clasped on their kinky locks for safety. On the chest of one a china
door-knob was suspended, on the chest of another the brass wheel of an
alarm clock.
Facing them, clinging to the railing of the veranda for support, stood
the sick white man. Any one of them could have knocked him over with the
blow of a little finger. Despite his firearms, the gang could have
rushed him and delivered that blow, when his head and the plantation
would have been theirs. Hatred and murder and lust for revenge they
possessed to overflowing. But one thing they lacked, the thing that he
possessed, the flame of mastery that would not quench, that burned
fiercely as ever in the disease-wasted body, and that was ever ready to
flare forth and scorch and singe them with its ire.
"Narada! Billy!" Sheldon called sharply.
Two men slunk unwillingly forward and waited.
Sheldon gave the keys of the handcuffs to a house-boy, who went under the
house and loosed the prisoner.
"You fella Narada, you fella Billy, take um this fella boy along tree and
make fast, hands high up," was Sheldon's command.
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