he doesn't quite know what he is scared of. Once when he was
just about to cross a river, a blow struck him on the top of his head
and knocked him head-foremost down the bank and splash into the water.
It was a nut, I fancy, that had fallen from a tree, by which accidents
people are sometimes killed. But at the time he thought it was a black
boy.

Aha, say you, and what is a black boy? Well, there are here a lot of
poor people who are brought here from distant islands to labour as
slaves for the Germans. They are not at all like the king or his people,
who are brown and very pretty; but these are black as negroes and as
ugly as sin, poor souls, and in their own lands they live all the time
at war and cook and eat men's flesh. The Germans thrash them with whips
to make them work, and every now and then some run away into the Bush,
as the forest is called, and build little sheds of leaves, and eat nuts
and roots and fruit, and dwell there by themselves in the great desert.
Sometimes they are bad and wild and come down in the villages and steal
and kill; and people whisper to each other that some of them have gone
back to their horrid old habits, and catch men and women in order to eat
them. But it is very likely not true; and the most of them are only
poor, stupid, trembling, half-starved, pitiful creatures like frightened
dogs. Their life is all very well when the sun shines, as it does eight
or nine months in the year. But it is very different the rest of the
time. The wind rages here most violently. The great trees thrash about
like whips; the air is filled with leaves and great branches flying
about like birds; and the sound of the trees falling shakes the earth.
It rains too as it never rains at home. You can hear a shower while it
is yet half a mile away, hissing like a shower-bath in the forest; and
when it comes to you, the water blinds your eyes, and the cold drenching
takes your breath away as though some one had struck you. In that kind
of weather it must be dreadful indeed to live in the woods, one man
alone by himself. And you must know that, if the lean man feels afraid
to be in the forest, the people of the island and the black boys are
much more afraid than he. For they believe the woods to be quite filled
with spirits; some are like pigs, and some are like flying things; but
others (and these are thought the most dangerous) come in the shape of
beautiful young women and young men, beautifully dressed in th