all wrong. They was always very willing,
certainly. All the while I was puzzling how I was to get the confounded
business settled. Every night before the dawn I used to march out in full
rig and go off to a place where I could see the 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. Hanged if I like so much ceremony.

"And then came the missionary. That missionary! _What_ a Guy! Gummy!
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 Exeter Hall of a 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 scissors?' for I don't hold with
missionaries.

"I had a lark with that missionary. He was a raw hand, and quite
outclassed by 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. There wasn't no
inscription; why should there be? but down he goes to read, and his
interpreter, being of course as superstitious as any of them, more so by
reason of his seeing missionary close to, took it for 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 int