lingo badly--even if I'd been able to speak at all--and I couldn't

go flapping a lot of gestures at them. So I drew pictures in sand

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

outclassed with a man like me. He gasped out who was I, and I told

him to read the inscription at my feet if he wanted to know. Down

he goes to read, and his interpreter, being of course as superstitious

as any of them, took it as an act of worship and plumped down like

a shot. All my people gave a howl of triumph, and there wasn't

any more business to be done in my village after that journey,

not by the likes of him.



"But, of course, I was a fool to choke him off like that. If I'd had

any sense I should have told him straight away of the treasure

and taken him into Co. I've no doubt he'd have come into Co. A child,

with a few hours to think it over, could have seen the connection

between my diving-dress and the loss of the Ocean Pioneer. A week

after he left I went out one morning and saw the Motherhood, the

salver's ship from Starr Race, towing up the channel and sounding.

The whole blessed game was up, and all my trouble thrown away. Gummy!

How wild I felt! And guying it in that stinking silly dress! Four

months!"



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