family. Nothing we had came amiss to him except
beer or spirits, and when one day some was offered him he spat it out
with evident disgust. We tried to make him understand that we wished to
know his opinion of the strangers. After a considerable time he
understood us, and making his countenance assume an expression of hatred
and disgust, he shook his head, and then, as it appeared, advised us to
shoot them on the first opportunity.

As we were now convinced of his good feelings towards us, he was allowed
to roam about our village at pleasure. One day he appeared, bringing a
basket containing some of the many magnificent flowers which flourished
in the forest, several fruits, and some emu's eggs. Supposing that he
had brought them as a present to my mother or father, we did not
interfere with him, but allowed him to take his own way of offering
them.

I watched him from a distance, when I saw him enter Mudge's room, the
door of which was open. Wondering what he was about, I at length
approached and looked in; when I saw him on his knees, with the contents
of his basket spread out on the ground, bending low before Mudge's gun,
which stood leaning against a table in the corner. He was uttering some
strange gibberish, and addressing the gun, evidently supposing it to be
a being possessed of supernatural powers. He had watched day after day
its to him wonderful performances, and had made up his mind to endeavour
to propitiate it.

I did not like to interrupt him, or in any way to ridicule him; and I
was very glad that neither Paddy Doyle nor Tommy saw him, for I was very
sure that they would not have refrained from doing so. I therefore
crept away without letting the poor savage know that I had seen him. He
at length came out of the hut, and sauntered about the village as usual,
spending some time watching the carpenter at work.

When I told Harry, he said he thought that it was very natural, and that
when he first came on board the _Heroine_ he was inclined to pay the
same sort of respect to the compass, the quadrants, the spy-glasses, the
big guns and muskets, and various other things, which Popo told him were
the white men's fetishes.

Pullingo had from the first looked upon Paddy Doyle as his chief friend,
and they soon managed to understand each other in a wonderful way.
Mudge suggested, indeed, that they were nearer akin than the rest of us.
We got Paddy to ask him if he could tell what had become of th