Having uttered this complimentary remark, the urchin was about to retreat, when Henry made a sudden dart at him, and caught him by the collar.
"Where got you the news, Will Corrie?" said Henry giving the boy a squeeze with his strong hand.
"Oh, please, be merciful, Henry, and I'll tell you all about it. But, pray, don't give me over to that grampus," cried the lad, pretending to whimper. "I got the news from a feller, that said he'd got it from a feller, that saw a feller, who said he'd heard a feller tell another feller, that he saw a _black_ feller in the bush, somewhere or other 'tween this and the other end o' the island, with a shot-hole in his right arm, running like a cogolampus, with ten pirates in full chase. Ah! oh! have mercy, Henry; really, my constitution will break down if you--"
"Silence, you chatter-box! and give me a reasonable account of what you have heard or seen, if you can."
The volatile urchin, who might have been about thirteen years of age, became preternaturally grave all of a sudden, and, looking up earnestly in his questioner's face, said, "Really, Henry, you are becoming unreasonable in your old age, to ask me to give you a reasonable account of a thing, and at the same time to be silent!"
"I'll tell you what, Corrie, I'll throttle you if you don't speak," said Henry.
"Ah! you _couldn't_," pleaded Corrie, in a tone of deep pathos.
"P'raps," observed John Bumpus, "p'raps if you hand over the young gen'l'm'n to the 'grampus,' _he'll_ make him speak."
On hearing this, the boy set up a howl of affected despair, and suffered Henry to lead him unresistingly to within a few feet of Bumpus; but, just as he was within an inch of the huge fist of that nautical monster, he suddenly wrenched his collar out of his captor's grasp, darted to the door, turned round on the threshold, hit the side of his own nose a sounding slap with the forefinger of his right hand, uttered an unexpressively savage yell, vanished from the scene, and,
"Like the baseless fabric of a vision, Left not a wreck behind,"
except the wreck of the milk-saucer of the household cat, which sagacious creature had wisely taken to flight at the first symptom of war.
The boy was instantly followed by Henry, but so light was his foot, that the fastest runner in the settlement had to penetrate the woods immediately behind his mother's house for a quarter of a mile before he succeeded in again laying hold of the refractory lad's collar.
