The Madman and the Pirate, page 118 by Robert Michael Ballantyne
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bbins must be a wag, I suspect."
"W'at's a wag, Marie?"
"Don't you know what a wag is?"
"Oh, yis, I know. When leetil bird sit on a stone an shake hims tail, I've heerd you an Orley say it wag--but misser Gubbins he got no tail to wag--so how can he wag it?"
"I didn't say he wagged it, Betsy," returned Marie, repressing a laugh, "but--you'll never get to understand what a wag means, so I won't try to explain. Look! Zariffa is venturesome. You'd better call her back."
Zariffa was indeed venturesome. Clad in a white flannel petticoat and a miniature coal-scuttle, she was at that moment wading so deep into the clear sea that she had to raise the little garment as high as her brown bosom to keep it out of the water; and with all her efforts she was unsuccessful, for, with that natural tendency of childhood to forget and neglect what cannot be seen, she had allowed the rear-part of the petticoat to drop into the sea.
This, however, occasioned little or no anxiety to Betsy Waroonga, for she was not an anxious mother; but when, raising her eyes a little higher, she beheld the tip of the back-fin of a shark describing lively circles in the water as if it had scented the tender morsel and were searching for it, her easy indifference vanished. She gave vent to a yell and made a bound that told eloquently of the savage beneath the missionary, and, in another instant was up to the knees in the water with the coal-scuttle quivering violently. Seizing Zariffa, she squeezed her almost to the bursting point against her palpitating breast, while the shark headed seaward in bitter disappointment.
"Don't go so deep agin, Ziffa," said the mother, with a gasp, as she set her little one down on the sand.
"No, musser," said the obedient child; and she kept on the landward side of her parent thereafter with demonstrative care.
It may be remarked here that, owing to Waroonga's love for, and admiration of, white men, Zariffa's native tongue was English--broken, of course, to t