“You talk that fella talk I get cross too much along you,” Van Horn bristled back, and then added, diplomatically, dipping into a half-case of tobacco sawed across and proffering a handful of stick tobacco:  “Much better you smoke ’m up and talk ’m good fella talk.”

But Nau-hau grandly waved aside the gift for which he hungered.

“Plenty tobacco stop along me,” he lied.  “What name one fella boy go way no come back?” he demanded.

Van Horn pulled the long slender account book out of the twist of his loin-cloth, and, while he skimmed its pages, impressed Nau-hau with the dynamite of the white man’s superior powers which enabled him to remember correctly inside the scrawled sheets of a book instead of inside his head.

“Sati,” Van Horn read, his finger marking the place, his eyes alternating watchfully between the writing and the black chief before him, while the black chief himself speculated and studied the chance of getting behind him and, with the single knife-thrust he knew so well, of severing the other’s spinal cord at the base of the neck.

“Sati,” Van Horn read.  “Last monsoon begin about this time, him fella Sati get ’m sick belly belong him too much; bime by him fella Sati finish altogether,” he translated into beche-de-mer the written information:  Died of dysentery July 4th, 1901.

“Plenty work him fella Sati, long time,” Nau-hau drove to the point.  “What come along money belong him?”

Van Horn did mental arithmetic from the account.

“Altogether him make ’m six tens pounds and two fella pounds gold money,” was his translation of sixty-two pounds of wages.  “I pay advance father belong him one ten pounds and five fella pounds.  Him finish altogether four tens pounds and seven fella pounds.”

“What name stop four tens pounds and seven fella pounds?” Nau-hau demanded, his tongue, but not his brain, encompassing so prodigious a sum.

Van Horn held up his hand.

“Too much hurry you fella Nau-hau.  Him fella Sati buy ’m slop chest along plantation two tens pounds and one fella pound.  Belong Sati he finish altogether two tens pounds and six fella pounds.”

“What name stop two tens pounds and six fella pounds?” Nau-hau continued inflexibly.

“Stop ’m along me,” the captain answered curtly.

“Give ’m me two tens pounds and six fella pounds.”

“Give ’m you hell,” Van Horn refused, and in the blue of his eyes the black chief sensed the impression of the dynamite out of which white men seemed made, and felt his brain quicken to the vision of the bloody day he first encountered an explosion of dynamite and was hurled through the air.

“What name that old fella boy stop ’m along canoe?” Van Horn asked, pointing to an old man in a canoe alongside.  “Him father belong Sati?”

“Him father belong Sati,” Nau-hau affirmed.