d assured them
that he would sleep for a time while the magic worked. Still, I was very
glad when he woke up on the following morning, and two or three of
his leading men could see that he was alive. The rest was lengthy but
simple, consisting merely in keeping him quiet and on a suitable diet
until there was no fear of the wound opening. We achieved it somehow
with the help of an intelligent native woman who, I suppose, was one
of his wives, and five days later were enabled to present him healed,
though rather tottery, to his affectionate subjects.

It was a great scene, which may be imagined. They bore him away in a
litter with the native woman to watch him and another to carry the relic
preserved in a basket, and us they acclaimed as gods. Thenceforward we
had nothing to fear in Orofena--except Bastin, though this we did not
know at the time.

All this while we had been living on our ship and growing very bored
there, although we employed the empty hours in conversation with
selected natives, thereby improving our knowledge of the language.
Bickley had the best of it, since already patients began to arrive which
occupied him. One of the first was that man whom Tommy had bitten. He
was carried to us in an almost comatose state, suffering apparently from
the symptoms of snake poisoning.

Afterward it turned out that he conceived Tommy to be a divine but most
venomous lizard that could make a very horrible noise, and began to
suffer as one might do from the bite of such a creature. Nothing that
Bickley could do was enough to save him and ultimately he died in
convulsions, a circumstance that enormously enhanced Tommy's reputation.
To tell the truth, we took advantage of it to explain that Tommy was
in fact a supernatural animal, a sort of tame demon which only harmed
people who had malevolent intentions towards those he served or who
tried to steal any of their possessions or to intrude upon them at
inconvenient hours, especially in the dark. So terrible was he, indeed,
that even the skill of the Great Priest, i.e., Bickley, could not avail
to save any whom once he had bitten in his rage. Even to be barked at by
him was dangerous and conveyed a curse that might last for generations.

All this we set out when Bastin was not there. He had wandered off,
as he said, to look for shells, but as we knew, to practise religious
orations in the Polynesian tongue with the waves for audience, as
Demosthenes is said to have done