"The American plantations. 'E's a bleedin' spirit."
"A what?"
"A spirit. Recruiter. We calls 'em spirits because they spirit men aw^6. They'll tike anybody—out of prisons, poor'ouses, anywhere."
The crowd itched to learn what that Samson in the patched pelts was supposed to be, and it was permitting itself to be entertained, and conceivably edified, but it was by no means co-operative.
"Four years of bloody slavery they gives you," somebody shouted. "Then they adds a couple more every time you let go a belch."
"Not so, my friends," cried the man in the dunce's cap. "A few years of easy, restful study, just so's you can look around and get used to being in that wonderful land—that's all. You wants time to pick your own plantation, don't you? Well, that's all it is. The contract don't mean nothing. Mere matter of form, my friends."
"He's a liar," Adam said, low.
"For sure. They all are. But there's a few as'll follow 'im, and ell turn 'em over to the top uns of the gang and they'll really pour the lies on like clabbered cream on berries."
The bleedin' spirit was thrusting the spruce first into this face, then into that, all the time dancing around.
"Ever sniff anything so delicious in your life, my friends? The true sequitur fugientum, straight from America."
"Don't smell like nothing to me," one man said.
"Didn't leave it under my nose long enough," another said.
"If the talk-talk-talk don't do it," said the man standing next to Adam, "then they buys 'em ale—spiked with gin."
"And if that doesn't work?"
The man shrugged.
"They 'its 'em on the 'ead."
The recruiter was losing his crowd. He whipped from a pocket three glass balls, which he began to juggle. He wasn't a very good juggler.
"You just lie there and watch the corn grow. And in the daytime you listen to the mooing of the kine, and at night to the—well, the nightingales."
"The roarin' of the tigers, I reckon," somebody shot out.
The recruiter shook a vigorous head.
"No tigers or lions left there any more. The first settlers killed 'em all off when they cleared the land."
"Bad enough they net nitwits, the only kind'd want to go to the plantations anyway," the man next to Adam said, "but when they grabs children it's a caution."
"They take children? Kids?"
"Aye. They're napping kids all over town. Offer 'em sweets, anything. Or just plain break into your 'ouse and steal 'em. Kidnappers—ain't you never heard of the kidnappers, sir?"
Adam slowly shook his head. The very word, he reflected, had an evil sound. Kidnappers. He shuddered.
"You never even heard of them? Say, where'n 'ell do you 'ail from, if a man might ask?"
"The American colonies," replied Adam.
Next time he looked the man was not there.
The man in the center of the circus remained, however, and he was working harder than ever. His glass balls were not getting much attention; his audience was walking out on him; so he played his trump card —the dark-haired monstrosity they were wondering about.
"Where else in the world except a place where the air's so pure and the climate's so balmy, where else would you find a specimen of the human race like my friend Cyossetta here?"
He thumped the big man's chest.
"It's the wonderful air, my friends!"
"This one of them red savages?"
"'E don't look red."
" 'Ard to tell what color 'e might turn out, somebody worked him over with soap and water awhile."
A pitchman doesn't dare to permit his audience to participate too freely, lest they take the show away from him.
"Cyossetta here, gents, happens to be a full-blooded Narragansett."
"That's a lie," Adam said loudly.
"Eh?" The recruiter peered at him, squinting, as though through smoke. He saw the sword. "Ah well, your lordship's right. I spoke too hasty. What I meant to say is, 'e's a full-blooded Indian. Matter of fact, 'is mother was a Massachusetts. So 'e's only half Narragansett."
"He's no more an American Indian than he is the man in the moon," declared Adam.
He couldn't have said why he broke in. He had nothing against the redskins, though he was no notable admirer of that race either. All the same, he didn't like to see the Narragansetts maligned.
Hands on hips, he surveyed the giant.
"He may be a Turk, for all I know, but he's no American. And everything else you've said here is a passel of lies, too."
Adam would have walked away then, had not the pitchman, fearing that he planned to linger, tried to scare him off.
Raising his voice: "Maybe if my fine jack-a-dandy here would like to swap a few buffets with Cyossetta he'd prove that a city-bred Englishman is physically superior to this product of the colonies?"
It was a threat. He was saying: "Be off—or I'll sic Samson on you!"
"I might, at that," Adam said.
Once again, there was no reason in it. This wasn't his cause, or shouldn't be. If the authorities of London permitted such goings-on, what was that to Adam?
Maybe he just felt like fighting? Maybe his blood still boiled from that encounter with the coach guards?
Anyway, he unstrapped his sword belt. He looked around for somebody to take it.
There was a thin, fragile-seeming youth, himself sworded. He was dressed in blue and silver, mighty jaunty, and on his mouth and in his eyes was a quizzical smile. Adam went to him.
"Would you be kind enough to guard my effects, sir?"
"Don't be a fool, sir," the young man said in a low voice, but smiling all the while. "That clod could crush you flat."
"I thank you kindly, sir," said Adam, "but I think I'll fight."
The man shrugged. He had thin shoulders. He took snuff from a gold case; but he also, in a moment, took Adam's sword, coat, hat. Adam had learned something about lace in Providence, and he'd have bet sixpence that that was real point d'Alengon at the young man's throat.
"God be w'ye. You'll need somebody's help."
"I don't think that this is any time," Adam said, "to be taking the name of Our Lord in vain."
The man opened his eyes very wide.
"Well, I'll be damned," he whispered.
Adam smiled, to show him there was no hard feeling, and then Adam turned and strode to the center of the circus.
It would not be like hitting a man. This was not a man, truly. It was some beast curiously manlike in appearance. The recruiter was more frenzical than ever, bobbing and leaping about, sweat bright on his face, while his wicked little eyes glittered. He spoke to Cyossetta, who gave over his yammering and came out with a real remark, his first, though nobody could understand anything either of them said. Likely enough they spouted a prearranged gibberish calculated to awe most listeners, or it could have been thieves' cant. Anyway, it wasn't Narragansett. Adam Long knew Narragansett.
Swinging his arms slowly, purposefully, Cyossetta shambled forward. Adam's breast tightened, his scalp tingled. Inside the hug of those arms any man would be crushed.
The brute stopped. He reached out, hands open, palms up. It was the gesture of a lazy Goliath. He seemed to be saying: Come here and let's get this over with; let me squash you like a melon, little man.
Standing his full height, Adam went in between those arms—but he went in fast. He punched right and left. He sprang back.
Cyossetta grunted. Blood stood out on his mouth.
"Clout 'im, yer ludship!"
"Bash'is beak in!"
"First claret's yourn! Now catch 'im a conker!"
Adam's fists hurt. Cyossetta seemed the same, except for the blood. He came shuffling in, his hands a little lower now, his shoulders hunched forward. His head was low, too, the chin on his chest. From somewhere behind that tangle of hair two small eyes regarded Adam: they might have been serpents watching from a bush.