slung down, feet foremost, in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross, would
probably have to escape into the nearest shop, or take the risk of being
mobbed. And the ladies of his family, who are very pretty ladies, and
think themselves uncommon well-dressed for Samoa, would (if the same
thing were to be done to them) be extremely glad to get into a cab....

TUSITALA.

III

UNDER COVER TO MISS B...

_Vailima, 4th Sept. 1892._

Dear Children in the Cellar,--I told you before something of the Black
Boys who come here to work on the plantations, and some of whom run away
and live a wild life in the forests of the island.[15] Now I want to
tell you of one who lived in the house of the lean man. Like the rest of
them here, he is a little fellow, and when he goes about in old battered
cheap European clothes, looks very small and shabby. When first he came
he was as lean as a tobacco-pipe, and his smile (like that of almost all
the others) was the sort that half makes you wish to smile yourself, and
half wish to cry. However, the boys in the kitchen took him in hand and
fed him up. They would set him down alone to table, and wait upon him
till he had his fill, which was a good long time to wait. The first
thing we noticed was that his little stomach began to stick out like a
pigeon's breast; and then the food got a little wider spread, and he
started little calves to his legs; and last of all, he began to get
quite saucy and impudent. He is really what you ought to call a young
man, though I suppose nobody in the whole wide world has any idea of his
age; and as far as his behaviour goes, you can only think of him as a
big little child with a good deal of sense.

When Austin built his fort against the Indians, Arick (for that is the
Black Boy's name) liked nothing so much as to help him. And this is very
funny, when you think that of all the dangerous savages in this island
Arick is one of the most dangerous. The other day, besides, he made
Austin a musical instrument of the sort they use in his own country--a
harp with only one string. He took a stick about three feet long and
perhaps four inches round. The under side he hollowed out in a deep
trench to serve as sounding-box; the two ends of the upper side he made
to curve upward like the ends of a canoe, and between these he stretched
the single string. He plays upon it with a match or a little piece of
stick, and sings to it songs of his own country, of