"Lizzie, you ask, suppose they been see any white fellow on island? White
fellow in plenty big canoe. That fellow canoe been come like 'it shore.
You tell them, 'Baal white fellow hurt you, suppose you been show, where
brother belonging to him sit down.' You tell them that, Lizzie."

Lizzie proceeded with the greatest gravity, and evidently with an
overwhelming sense of self-importance, to put the required questions,
whilst we anxiously awaited her replies.

"Well, what they been say?" exclaimed Dunmore at last, when there was a
momentary break in the conversation.

I should imagine that the vernacular of the Hinchinbrook Islanders was not
pre-eminently adapted for the noble intricacies of diplomatic intrigue. In
the first place it contains but few words, and none representing any number
higher than five, so that even the courtly nobleman now presiding over
Foreign Affairs, would find the smooth flow of his amenities subjected to
rude shocks; and as for expressing any large number either in words or
figures -- say, for instance, the Alabama indemnity of three millions -- to
do so, would tax to the utmost the genius of the late Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Lizzie, in her first flash of pride, as representing a
plenipotentiary armed with extraordinary powers, had commenced negotiations
with the dignity and slowness of speech adapted to so exalted a personage.
But the shrill chorus which emanated from the audience was decidedly
antagonistic to grave deliberation, and the anxious curiosity of the woman
superseding the self imposed role of the diplomatist, our envoy lost the
pompous tone she had first adopted, and a volley of queries and replies was
exchanged so rapidly, and with such appalling shrillness, that we onlookers
ran a great risk of being either deafened, or driven out of our senses. At
the first slackening of the wordy warfare, Dunmore put his questions, and