I have told you that I had picked up something of
medicine. One day when Dr. Somerton was down with a fever a
little Andaman Islander was picked up by a convict-gang in the
woods. He was sick to death, and had gone to a lonely place to
die. I took him in hand, though he was as venomous as a young
snake, and after a couple of months I got him all right and able
to walk. He took a kind of fancy to me then, and would hardly go
back to his woods, but was always hanging about my hut. I
learned a little of his lingo from him, and this made him all the
fonder of me.
"Tonga--for that was his name--was a fine boatman, and owned a
big, roomy canoe of his own. When I found that he was devoted to
me and would do anything to serve me, I saw my chance of escape.
I talked it over with him. He was to bring his boat round on a
certain night to an old wharf which was never guarded, and there
he was to pick me up. I gave him directions to have several
gourds of water and a lot of yams, cocoa-nuts, and sweet
potatoes.
"He was stanch and true, was little Tonga. No man ever had a
more faithful mate. At the night named he had his boat at the
wharf. As it chanced, however, there was one of the convict-
guard down there,--a vile Pathan who had never missed a chance of
insulting and injuring me.
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