Now and then the speaker would be interrupted by his excitable listeners with some exclamation of wonder, horror, incredulity, derision, pity, or the like--which, being in Anglo-Congo or ebony lingo, must needs be unintelligible to many of my readers. Therefore, for the enlightenment and edification of the unlearned, have I thought it best to give a list of the interjections and phrases in question, with the definition or free translation of each, ignoring etymologies as smacking, just here, of pedantry:
O HUSH--"You are too funny;" "You are too smart;" "You are a fool."
I YI--Hurrah; bravo; bully; well done: coupled with "my larky," equivalent to "Catch me at that if you can."
HOO-WEEP (followed by a whistle)--Expressive of unspeakable astonishment.
OHO--A cry of exultation, translated into "Goody, goody!"
LAUS-A-MARCY--Shocking; horrible; dreadful: "My wool stands on end with horror."
GOODNESS GRACIOUS--Used in a similar sense to the above, though in a milder degree.
TSHT, TSHT, TSHT--An unspellable sound, produced by applying the tip of the tongue to the palate with a quick suck at the air, repented three times; translatable into, "What a pity, what a pity!" "O dear, O dear!"
LETTIN' ON--Making a pretense of; feigning; hoaxing.
U-GOOH--An unspellable interjection pronounced, or rather produced, by closing the lips and sending the sound through the nose, either forcibly and suddenly with a quick taper, or the reverse with a quick, short swell; or beginning gently, no bigger than a knitting-needle, and slowly swelling to a certain degree, then suddenly flaring, like the mouth of a dinner-horn. In short, varying according to the feeling or thought to be expressed. Perhaps in the ebony lingo there is no word so frequently used, and in senses so various, as U-gooh. Rendered into English, some of the sentiments expressed thereby are the following: "Admirable!" "Wonderful!" "O how nice!" "O how good!" "You astonish me!" "I admire you!" "I highly commend you!" "I applaud you!" "I am listening--pray proceed!" "What you tell me is very strange, nevertheless I believe you!" "I have no words to express what I feel, therefore can only say, 'U-gooh!'"
What our black Munchausen told the ebony wonder-mongers of his great adventure before and after the fight was such a jumble of marvels and horrors as were hardly fitting to appear in a sober book like ours, pledged to confine itself to possibilities, if not to facts. Where the narrative should have been truest, if truly told, there the narrator was wildest, drawing freely upon his imagination to fill up the wide gaps between the few conspicuous incidents marking its setting out and winding up. Gap number one was made interesting with bears; gap number two, lively with panthers; gap number three, thrilling with wolves; and where the war-path led into the shades of night, there the woods were alive with ghosts. We shall, therefore, make our dip into the medley just at that point where the narrator, having brought his listeners all agape to the hazardous edge of ambush and battle subsides into the possible; the story now rising of itself into the wonderful, and having no great need of exaggeration or embellishment to make it spicy.