e metaphysical and philological
reflections, the seaman was stripping himself to the waist.

"That's the Burmese style, sir," he said, pointing to his shoulders and
upper arm.

These limbs were tattooed in a beautiful soft blue; the pattern was a
series of diminishing squares, from which long narrow triangles ran down
to the elbow-joints.

"_Sehr schon, sehr schon_," exclaimed the delighted Professor. "It
is very _hubsch_, very pretty, very well. We cannot now decorate, we
Germans. Ach, it is mournful!" and he sighed. "And now, sir, have you to
show me any _moko_? A little _moko_ would be very instructive."

"Moko? Rather! The Maori pattern, you mean; the New Zealand dodge? Just
look between my shoulders," and the seaman turned a broad bare back,
whereon were designs of curious involuted spirals.

"That is right, that is right," whispered the Professor. "_Moko,
schlange_, serpent-marks, so they call it in their tongue. Better
_moko_, on an European man, have I never seen. You observe," he remarked
to the elder Mr. Wright, waving his hand as he followed the tattooed
lines--"you observe the serpentine curves? Very beautiful."

"Extremely interesting," said Mr. Wright, who, being no anthropologist,
seemed nervous and uncomfortable.

"Corresponds, too, with the marks in the picture," he added, comparing
the sketch of the original Shields with the body of the claimant.

"Are you satisfied now, governor?" asked the sailor.

"One little moment. Have you on the Red Sea coast been? Have you been at
Suakim? Have you any Arab markings?"

"Oh, yes; here you are!" and the voyager pointed to his breast.

The Professor inspected, with unconcealed delight, some small tattooings
of irregular form.

"It is, it is," he cried, "the _wasm_, the _sharat_,* the Semitic tribal
mark, the mark with which the Arab tribes brand their cattle! Of old
time they did tattoo it on their bodies. The learned Herr Professor
Robertson Smith, in his leedle book, do you know what he calls that very
mark, my dear sir?"

* Sharat or Short.--"The shart was in old times a tattooed
mark.... In the patriarchal story of Cain...the institution
of blood revenge is connected with a 'mark' which Jehovah
appoints to Cain. Can this be anything else than the
_sharat_, or tribal mark, which every man bore on his
person?"
--Robertson Smith, _Kinship in Ancient Arabia_, p.215.

"Not I," said the sailor; "I'm no scholar."