s joined in with "God
Save the Queen," which has exactly the same air. The incident is one
that should appeal to all British people, including even her Most
Gracious Majesty herself. As the girls' voices rose, half sobbingly, in
the old familiar air, beloved of every English-speaking person, tears
fairly ran down their fair but sad young faces, and I could not help
being struck with the pathos of the scene.

But all things considered, these were really happy days for all of us, at
any rate in comparison with those we had previously experienced. We had
by this time quite an orchestra of reed flutes and the fiddles aforesaid,
whose strings were of gut procured from the native wild-cat--a very
little fellow, by the way, about the size of a fair-sized rat; I found
him everywhere. These cats were great thieves, and only roamed about at
night. I trapped them in great numbers by means of an ingenious native
arrangement of pointed sticks of wood, which, while providing an easy
entrance, yet confronted the outgoing cat with a formidable _chevaux-de-
frise_. The bait I used was meat in an almost putrid condition.

I could not handle the prisoners in the morning, because they scratched
and bit quite savagely; I therefore forked them out with a spear. As
regards their own prey, they waged perpetual warfare against the native
rats. The skin of these cats was beautifully soft, and altogether they
were quite leopards in miniature. Best of all, they made excellent
eating, the more so in that their flesh was almost the only meat dish
that had not the eternal flavour of the eucalyptus leaf, which all our
other "joints" possessed. The girls never knew that they were eating
cats, to say nothing about rats. In order to save their feelings, I told
them that both "dishes" were squirrels!

My hair at this time was even longer than the girls' own, so it is no
wonder that it provided bows for the fiddles. My companions took great
delight in dressing my absurdly long tresses, using combs which I had
made out of porcupines' quills.

Our contentment was a great source of joy to Yamba, who was now fully
convinced that I would settle down among her people for ever.

The blacks were strangely affected by our singing. Any kind of civilised
music or singing was to them anathema. What they liked best was the
harsh uproar made by pieces of wood beaten together, or the weird
jabbering and chanting that accompanied a big feast. Our singin