in the slums of any city; the same lean, dark-eyed,
eager, vulgar face, the same sudden, hoarse guffaws, the same forward
and yet anxious manner, as with a tail of an eye on the policeman: only
the policeman here was a live king, and his truncheon a rifle. I doubt
if you could find anywhere out of the islands, or often there, the
parallel of "Fatty," a mountain of a girl, who must have weighed near as
many stones as she counted summers, could have given a good account of a
life-guardsman, had the face of a baby, and applied her vast mechanical
forces almost exclusively to play. But they were all three of the same
merry spirit. Our washing was conducted in a game of romps; and they
fled and pursued, and splashed, and pelted, and rolled each other in the
sand, and kept up a continuous noise of cries and laughter like holiday
children. Indeed, and however strange their own function in that austere
establishment, were they not escaped for the day from the largest and
strictest Ladies' School in the South Seas?

Our fifth attendant was no less a person than the royal cook. He was
strikingly handsome both in face and body, lazy as a slave, and insolent
as a butcher's boy. He slept and smoked on our premises in various
graceful attitudes; but so far from helping Ah Fu, he was not at the
pains to watch him. It may be said of him that he came to learn, and
remained to teach; and his lessons were at times difficult to stomach.
For example, he was sent to fill a bucket from the well. About half-way
he found my wife watering her onions, changed buckets with her, and
leaving her the empty, returned to the kitchen with the full. On another
occasion he was given a dish of dumplings for the king, was told they
must be eaten hot, and that he should carry them as fast as possible.
The wretch set oft at the rate of about a mile in the hour, head in air,
toes turned out. My patience, after a month of trial, failed me at the
sight. I pursued, caught him by his two big shoulders, and thrusting him
before me, ran with him down the hill, over the sands, and through the
applauding village, to the Speak House, where the king was then holding
a pow-wow. He had the impudence to pretend he was internally injured by
my violence, and to profess serious apprehensions for his life.

All this we endured; for the ways of Tembinok' are summary, and I was
not yet ripe to take a hand in the man's death. But in the meanwhile,
here was my unfortunate China bo