"You'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with
savages, but these poor misguided, ignorant creatures took me
straight to their kind of joss place to present me to the blessed
old black stone there. By this time I was beginning to sort of realise
the depth of their ignorance, and directly I set eyes on this deity
I took my cue. I started a baritone howl, 'wow-wow,' very long
on one note, and began waving my arms about a lot, and then very
slowly and ceremoniously turned their image over on its side and
sat down on it. I wanted to sit down badly, for diving-dresses ain't
much wear in the tropics. Or, to put it different like, they're
a sight too much. It took away their breath, I could see, my sitting
on their joss, but in less time than a minute they made up their
minds and were hard at work worshipping me. And I can tell you
I felt a bit relieved to see things turning out so well, in spite
of the weight on my shoulders and feet.

"But what made me anxious was what the chaps in the canoes might
think when they came back. If they'd seen me in the boat before
I went down, and without the helmet on--for they might have been
spying and hiding since over night--they would very likely take
a different view from the others. I was in a deuce of a stew about
that for hours, as it seemed, until the shindy of the arrival began.

"But they took it down--the whole blessed village took it down.
At the cost of sitting up stiff and stern, as much like those sitting
Egyptian images one sees as I could manage, for pretty nearly
twelve hours, I should guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'd
hardly think what it meant in that heat and stink. I don't think
any of them dreamt of the man inside. I was just a wonderful leathery
great joss that had come up with luck out of the water. But the fatigue!