But there were seven or eight negroes whose looks I took no great liking to.
"Like some fancy sponges to send home ?" said one of these, coming up to me.

"Cost you five times as much in Nassau." "Certainly I'd like a few sponges," I said.
And then Theodore came up to me, looking as though he had lost his mind over the rather fancy silk tie I happened to be wearing.
"Give me dat!" he said, touching it, like a crazy man.
"I can't afford to give you that, Theodore." "I'd die for dat," he declared.
"Take this handkerchief instead;" but, meanwhile, my eyes were opening.
"Take this instead, Theodore," I suggested.
"I'd die for dat," he repeated, touching it.
His voice and touch made me sick and afraid, just as people in a lunatic asylum make one afraid.
"Look out!" murmured Tom again at my elbow.
And just then I noticed, hiding in some bushes of seven-year apple trees, two faces I had good reason to know.
I had barely time to pull out the Commandant's revolver from my pocket.
I knew it was to be either the pock-marked genius or the engineer.

But, for the moment, I was not to be sure which one I had hit.

For, as my gun went off, something heavy came down on my head, and for the time I was shut off from whatever else was going on..