nd a place for our boat, which was towed ashore
behind a canoe; and on the chief understanding the want, he very soon
pointed out to us a shady nook where it could be run ashore and beached
in safety, away from the waves, he helping himself to make the rope fast
to a large cocoa-nut tree.

This done, the chief walked, or rather strutted, round our boat, and
looked under it, over it, and about it in all directions, making
grimaces expressive of his disgust, and ending by kicking its sides and
making derisive gestures, to show that he thought it a very poor boat
indeed.

The prahu was going away the next day, so a busy scene of trading went
on till night, when the captain sought us out, and in his broken English
enquired very earnestly whether we had landed everything, including
sundry stores which my Uncle Dick had purchased of the Scotch merchants
at Singapore, they being able to tell him what was most likely to find
favour amongst the savages with whom we should have to deal.

In answer to a question, the Malay captain assured us that we might feel
quite safe amongst the Ke islanders, and also with those in the Aru and
neighbouring isles; but he said that he would not trust the men of New
Guinea, unless it was in a place where they had never seen white men
before.

He promised to be on the look-out for us as he was trading to and fro
during the next year or two, for my uncle assured him that we should be
about that time among the islands, and with the promise to meet us here
in a year's time if we did not meet before, and to come from Singapore
provided with plenty of powder and shot for our use, and ready to take
back any cases of specimens we might have ready, he parted from us with
the grave courtesy of a Mohammedan gentleman. The next time we saw him
was in the morning, as he waved his scarlet headkerchief to us from the
deck of his prahu, which was floating away on the current, there being
barely wind enough to fill the sails.

Some very beautifully shaped canoes filled with the naked black
islanders paddled out for some little distance beside the prahu, singing
and shouting, and splashing the sea into foam with their paddles, making
it sparkle like diamonds in the glorious morning sunshine.

But after a while my uncle and I, in spite of the delightful sensation
of being ashore in such a glorious climate, began to feel so very human
that we set to and made a fire; then I fetched water from a spring in
the