All the boatmen shouted,
"Here, sar. This good boat, sar. You come wid me, sar," at the
top of their voices, while at the same time they were hard at work
pulling each other's boats back and pushing their own forward. So
great was the struggle as Frank and Mr. Goodenough approached the
gangway, so great the crowd upon the ladder, that one side of the
iron bar from which the ladder chains depend broke in two, causing
the ladder to drop some inches and giving a ducking to those on the
lower step, causing shouts of laughter and confusion. These rose
into perfect yells of amusement when one of the sailors suddenly
loosed the ladder rope, letting five or six of the negroes into the
water up to their necks. So intense was the appreciation by the
sable mind of this joke that the boatmen rolled about with laughter,
and even the victims, when they had once scrambled into their boats,
yelled like people possessed.
"They are just like children," Mr. Goodenough said. "They are
always either laughing or quarreling. They are good natured and
passionate, indolent, but will work hard for a time; clever up
to a certain point, densely stupid beyond. The intelligence of an
average negro is about equal to that of a European child of ten years
old.
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