Читать книгу The Queen Versus Billy, and Other Stories онлайн

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For a moment Billy made no answer. At last, in a husky voice, he said:

“You mean Cap’n Tom, who live here before?”

“Him you hurled into eternity with all his sins hot on him. Yes, Captain Tom, the trader.”

“No!” cried Billy, with a strangled cry. “Me no sorry. White fellow no good; I kill him.”

“Quinn,” cried Facey, “your time’s up.” The first lieutenant’s face was livid, and his hands trembled as he bound Billy’s eyes with a silk handkerchief.

“Stand right there, Billy,” said the officer, turning the prisoner round to face the firing party, that was already drawn up.

“Good-bye, Missy Facey and gennelmen all,” whimpered the boy.

“Good-bye, Billy,” returned the other. “Now, men,” he added, as he ran his eye along the faltering faces, “no damned squeamishness; if you want to help the nigger, you’ll shoot straight. For God’s sake don’t mangle him.

“Fire!”

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HE stood five feet nothing in his naked feet, a muscular, sandy little fellow, with a shock of red hair, a pair of watery blue eyes, and a tawny, sun-burned beard, the colour of fried carrots. I could not see myself that he was beautiful, and might have lived a year with him and never found it out; though he assured me, with a giggle of something like embarrassment, that he was no less a person than the Beautiful Man of Pingalap. Such at least was his name amongst the natives, who had admired him so persistently, and talked of him so much, that even the whites had come to call him by that familiar appellation.