I'm afraid you don't do yourself justice."

"Of course a battle is a battle," said Phyllis stoutly. "If you hadn't
killed them they would have killed you. You were in the right, I'm
sure."

"I'm not so sure of that," said he, shaking his head. "To tell you the
truth, the elements of the crisis of Headman Glowabyola were somewhat
involved. The original dispute was difficult for a foreigner to
understand--it was, in fact, the Schleswig-Holstein question of
Kafalonga."

"You settled it, anyway," suggested Ella. "You were the Bismarck of
what's-its-name?"

"I doubled the parts of Bismarck and Von Moltke," said he.

"And that's why they worshiped you as their god? I don't wonder at
the heathen in his blindness doing that. Any man who was the same as
Bismarck and Von Moltke would certainly shoulder a deity out of his
way," laughed Ella.

"It so happened, however, that my deification was due neither to my
recognition as a diplomatist nor as a military strategist," said the
explorer. "No, they wanted something beyond the mere fighting man to
worship, and my knowledge of that fact combined with their paeans of
victory--to the _obbligato_ of a solid iron-wood drum beaten with the
thigh bones of the conquered--to keep me awake at night. But one morning
the headman came upon me when I was about to boil my kettle to make
myself a cup of tea. I had a small lamp that burned spirits, and he
stood by while I filled it up from the bottle that I carried with me.
He took it for granted that the spirit was water, and he was greatly
impressed when he saw it flare up as I applied a lighted match to it. He
asked me if I possessed the power to set water in a blaze, and I assured
him that that was something for which I had long been celebrated; adding
that when I had had my breakfast I meant to while away an hour or two
by setting fire to the ocean itself. He implored of me to reconsider my
decision, and when I had poured a little spirit into the hollow of my
hand and lighted it in the presence of his most eminent scientists, they
said that they also desired to associate themselves with the headman's
petition. I was, however, inexorable; I walked down to the beach and
had just struck a match on the brink of the ocean when the whole tribe
prostrated themselves around me, promising to continue worshiping me if
I would only stay my hand. Well, what could I do? I weakly yielded and
spared the multitudinous sea from being the medium of what wo