them. Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved heads and bits of
top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on a chimney-
piece. Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges. I came up
hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant
business; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the
three faces. Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran
for his mammy. The other two, trying to follow suit, got foul,
came to ground together bawling, wriggled right out of their sheets
mother-naked, and in a moment there were all three of them
scampering for their lives and singing out like pigs. The natives,
who would never let a joke slip, even at a burial, laughed and let
up, as short as a dog's bark.

They say it scares a man to be alone. No such thing. What scares
him in the dark or the high bush is that he can't make sure, and
there might be an army at his elbow. What scares him worst is to
be right in the midst of a crowd, and have no guess of what they're
driving at. When that laugh stopped, I stopped too. The boys had
not yet made their offing, they were still on the full stretch
going the one way, when I had already gone about ship and was
sheering off the other. Like a fool I had come out, doing my five
knots; like a fool I went back again. It must have been the
funniest thing to see, and what knocked me silly, this time no one
laughed; only one old woman gave a kind of pious moan, the way you
have heard Dissenters in their chapels at the sermon.

"I never saw such fools of Kanakas as your people here," I said
once to Uma, glancing out of the window at the starers.

"Savvy nothing," says Uma, with a kind of disgusted air that she