"I tell you I am not a spirit, and as hungry as I don't particularly want
to be again. Here, look at the back of my trousers, caked three inches
deep in mud. If I were a spirit, do you think I would slide about on my
coat-tails like that? Do you think that if I could travel by volition
I would slip down these infernal cliffs on my pants' seat as I have just
done? And as for materialism--look at this fist; it punched you just now!
Surely there was nothing spiritual in that knock?''

"No," said the savage, rubbing his head, "it was a good, honest rap,
so I must take you at your word. If you are indeed man, and hungry,
it will be a charity to feed you; if you are a spirit, it will at least
be interesting to watch you eat; so sit down, and let's see what I have
in my wallet."

So cross-legged we squatted opposite each other on the table rock, and,
feeling like another Sindbad the Sailor, I watched my new friend fumble
in his bag and lay out at his side all sorts of odds and ends of string,
fish-hooks, chewing-gum, material for making a fire, and so on, until
at last he came to a package (done up, I noted with delight, in a broad,
green leaf which had certainly been growing that morning), and unrolling
it, displayed a lump of dried meat, a few biscuits, much thicker and
heavier than the honey-cakes of the Hither folk, and something that
looked and smelt like strong, white cheese.

He signed to me to eat, and you may depend upon it I was not slow in
accepting the invitation. That tough biltong tasted to me like the
tenderest steak that ever came from a grill; the biscuits were ambrosial;
the cheese melted in my mouth as butter melts in that of the virtuous; but
when the old man finished the quaint picnic by inviting me to accompany