sh and shoot black boys as men shoot pigeons. He said nothing about
eating them, nor do I think he really meant to. I think all he wanted
was to clear the property of vermin as gamekeepers at home kill weasels,
or housewives mice.

The other day he was sent down on an errand to the German Firm where
many of the black boys live. It was very late when he came home on a
bright moonlight night. He had a white bandage round his head, his eyes
shone, and he could scarcely speak for excitement. It seems some of the
black boys who were his enemies at home had attacked him, and one with a
knife. By his own account he had fought very well, but the odds were
heavy; the man with the knife had cut him both in the head and back, he
had been struck down, and if some of the black boys of his own side had
not come to the rescue, he must certainly have been killed. I am sure no
Christmas-box could make any of you children so happy as this fight made
Arick. A great part of the next day he neglected his work to play upon
the one-stringed harp and sing songs about his great victory. And
to-day, when he is gone upon his holiday, he has announced that he is
going back to the German Firm to have another battle and another
triumph. I do not think he will go all the same, or I should be more
uneasy, for I do not want to have my Arick killed; and there is no doubt
that if he begins to fight again, he will be likely to go on with it
very far. For I have seen him once when he saw, or thought he saw, an
enemy. It was one of our dreadful days of rain, the sound of it like a
great waterfall or like a tempest of wind blowing in the forest; and
there came to our door two runaway black boys seeking work. In such
weather as that my enemy's dog (as Shakespeare says) should have had a
right to shelter. But when Arick saw these two poor rogues coming with
their empty bellies and drenched clothes, and one of them with a stolen
cutlass in his hand, through that world of falling water, he had no
thought of pity in his heart. Crouching behind one of the pillars of the
verandah, which he held in his two hands, his mouth drew back into a
strange sort of smile, his eyes grew bigger and bigger, and his whole
face was just like the one word Murder in big capitals.

Now I have told you a great deal too much about poor Arick's savage
nature, and now I must tell you about a great amusement he had the other
day. There came an English ship of war in the harbour, and the o