For the moment Philip was too befuddled to resent the insult. Besides, he was eager for that relaxation for which he had come, and not to be found in Sabbath Salthaven, and perhaps also anxious to retrieve his reputation as "a man among men." So he inquired with a bit of a swagger:
"How're they rolling tonight, Pink?"
"Smooth, sonny, smooth," interposed the old man, reaching under his flannel shirt, "looky there, my gentleman's whelp!" He shook a small leather bag, hung by a soiled string from his corded neck. "My amoolet—I'm a Drooid by religion—studied 'em all, an' Drooids is the most sensible—" Then he undid the bag and stroked the tiny ivory cubes. "Them's human—got 'em down Madagascar way—carved outen the back teeth o' a big buck nigger. The dirty tried to kill me with a kriss—pizened. Y' can see his mark there—" across the chest, yellowed and shrunk like a lean roosting-fowl, ran a foot-long ragged scar—"but I done him proper"
He finished the string of characterizations he deemed fitting, then went on—"I got wind uv their plannin' a little fest—cannybals, y'know—and Dick Hosford, the bosun, was sick uv a fever. I knowed he was goin to die so, just afore his death-rattle, I filled him full o' pizen. It was all friendly-like, for I knowed Dick would be glad to do an old matey a good turn, seein' he was agoin to die anyway.
"Next morning I toted his corp ashore in the dingy, an' served him up, hot an' smokin' to them cannybals. It wasn't long afore the hull fambly, includin' my black friend, his nex-o-kin, an' all the real distant ones, lay rottin in the jungle.
