Captain Jansen's
warning that any canoe sighted that night would be pumped full of
lead, Ugi turned into a bellicose declaration of war, which wound up
with a peroration somewhat to the following effect: "You kill my
captain, I drink his blood and die with him!"
The bushmen contented themselves with burning an unoccupied mission
house, and sneaked back to the bush. The next day the Eugenie
sailed in and dropped anchor. Three days and two nights the Minota
pounded on the reef; but she held together, and the shell of her was
pulled off at last and anchored in smooth water. There we said
good-bye to her and all on board, and sailed away on the Eugenie,
bound for Florida Island. {1}
CHAPTER XVI - BECHE DE MER ENGLISH
Given a number of white traders, a wide area of land, and scores of
savage languages and dialects, the result will be that the traders
will manufacture a totally new, unscientific, but perfectly
adequate, language. This the traders did when they invented the
Chinook lingo for use over British Columbia, Alaska, and the
Northwest Territory. So with the lingo of the Kroo-boys of Africa,
the pigeon English of the Far East, and the beche de mer of the
westerly portion of the South Seas. This latter is often called
pigeon English, but pigeon English it certainly is not. To show how
totally different it is, mention need be made only of the fact that
the classic piecee of China has no place in it.
