Jacky looked on awestruck as George read the book of his religion.  “Open the door, Jacky.”

Jacky opened the door; then coming to George’s side, he said with an anxious, inquiring look and trembling voice, “Are you going to leave me, George?”

“Yes, Jacky, my boy,” said George, “I doubt I am going to leave you.  So now thank you and bless you for all kindness.  Put your face close down to mine-there—­I don’t care for your black skin—­He who made mine made yours; and I feel we are brothers, and you have been one to me.  Good-by, dear, and don’t stay here.  You can do nothing more for your poor friend George.”

Jacky gave a little moan.  “Yes, um can do a little more before he go and hide him face where there are a good deal of trees.”

Then Jacky went almost on tiptoe, and fetched another calabash full of water and placed it by George’s head.  Then he went very softly and fetched the heavy iron which he had seen George use in penning sheep, and laid it by George’s side; next he went softly and brought George’s gun, and laid it gently by George’s side down on the ground.

This done he turned to take his last look of the sick man now feebly dozing, the little book in his drooping hand.  But as he gazed nature rushed over the poor savage’s heart and took it quite by surprise.  Even while bending over his white brother to look his last farewell, with a sudden start he turned his back on him, and sinking on his hams he burst out crying and sobbing with a wild and terrible violence.

CHAPTER XLI.

FOR near an hour Jacky sat upon the ground, his face averted from his sick friend, and cried; then suddenly he rose, and without looking at him went out at the door, and turning his face toward the great forests that lay forty miles distant eastward, he ran all the night, and long before dawn was hid in the pathless woods.

A white man feels that grief, when not selfish, is honorable, and unconsciously he nurses such grief more or less; but to simple-minded Jacky grief was merely a subtle pain, and to be got rid of as quickly as possible, like any other pain.

He ran to the vast and distant woods, hoping to leave George’s death a long way behind him, and so not see what caused his pain so plain as he saw it just now.  It is to be observed that he looked upon George as dead.  The taking into his hand of the book of his religion, the kind embrace, the request that the door might be opened, doubtless for the disembodied spirit to pass out, all these rites were understood by Jacky to imply that the last scene was at hand.  Why witness it? it would make him still more uncomfortable.  Therefore he ran, and never once looked back, and plunged into the impenetrable gloom of the eastern forests.

The white man had left Fielding to get a richer master.  The half-reasoning savage left him to cure his own grief at losing him.  There he lay abandoned in trouble and sickness by all his kind.  But one friend never stirred; a single-hearted, single-minded, non-reasoning friend.