e 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