"Why, Mr Serjeant," said Sprawl, "show the lady in, and no more about it." The man said something in Eboe, and forthwith in stepped one of the most startling apparitions that ever I witnessed. It was a tall, exquisitely formed young Eboe woman--fair enough to have passed for a mulatto. She wore neatly worked grass buskins, that fitted round the ankle, as close as a laced boot made by Gundry. Her only dress was composed of a long web of some sort of native cloth, about a foot wide, and composed of red, blue, and yellow stripes alternately. Three or four turns of it were wrapped round her loins, and then an end hung down before, with a deep fringe of the blended colours of the stripes; while the other end was carried up from the right hip, across her back, and brought over the left shoulder, where it was again festooned, by being twined two or three turns round the left arm; which, when she entered, was folded across her bosom. Her skin was thickly tatooed at the waist, but her beautiful bosom was untouched; all to a dark peak, that projected upwards, giving the tatooing the appearance of a dark-coloured stomacher. Her cheeks and forehead were also thickly marked, but without impairing the beauty of the expression of her bland, although African features--such an eye, and such teeth! She wore large gold ear-rings; and anklets and armlets of solid silver. Her head was bound round with a large green or blue cotton shawl; and there she stood, looking at us with the greatest composure; totally unconscious of the unusualness of her costume, or the scantiness thereof.
"Well, my good man, take a glass of grog, will ye? and here, give your wife a glass of wine, and then go and betake yourselves to rest, in the quietest corner you can find.--Here, steward, see that Serjeant Quacco and his wife are cared for--a corner forward of some kind or another until morning."
"Never say such a ting, massa--de men were unpleasant company--can't go to dem--so I bring my vife to sleep wid you."
"Mighty obliged, master serjeant--but would rather be excused, if it be the same thing to you."
"Ho, ho, ho," laughed the savage--"I mean, massa, dat you would permit we to sleep at foot of de ladder dere, and not be obliged to go among de rude peoples in de oder part of de sip."