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Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
page 126 of 268 (47%)
and sat down beside them and hooted like one o'clock. Sometimes
they did the things I wanted all right, and sometimes they did them
all wrong. They was always very willing, certainly. All the while
I was puzzling how I was to get the confounded business settled.
Every night before the dawn I used to march out in full rig and go off
to a place where I could see the channel in which the Ocean Pioneer
lay sunk, and once even, one moonlight night, I tried to walk out
to her, but the weeds and rocks and dark clean beat me. I didn't get
back till full day, and then I found all those silly niggers out on
the beach praying their sea-god to return to them. I was that vexed
and tired, messing and tumbling about, and coming up and going down
again, I could have punched their silly heads all round when they
started rejoicing. I'm hanged if I like so much ceremony.

"And then came the missionary. That missionary! It was in the afternoon,
and I was sitting in state in my outer temple place, sitting on
that old black stone of theirs when he came. I heard a row outside
and jabbering, and then his voice speaking to an interpreter.
'They worship stocks and stones,' he said, and I knew what was up,
in a flash. I had one of my windows out for comfort, and I sang out
straight away on the spur of the moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says.
'You come inside,' I says, 'and I'll punch your blooming head.'
There was a kind of silence and more jabbering, and in he came,
Bible in hand, after the manner of them--a little sandy chap in specks
and a pith helmet. I flatter myself that me sitting there in
the shadows, with my copper head and my big goggles, struck him
a bit of a heap at first. 'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade in calico?'
for I don't hold with missionaries.

"I had a lark with that missionary. He was a raw hand, and quite
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