l house servant.
"Hey, you, boy, you tell 'm one fella king come along me."

The boy departed, and back came the prime minister, perturbed, ill at
ease, and garrulous with apologetic explanation. In short, the king
slept, and was not to be disturbed.

"King he plenty strong fella sleep," was his final sentence.

McAllister was in such a rage that the prime minister incontinently
fled, to return with the king himself. They were a magnificent pair,
the king especially, who must have been all of six feet three inches in
height. His features had the eagle-like quality that is so frequently
found in those of the North American Indian. He had been molded and born
to rule. His eyes flashed as he listened, but right meekly he obeyed
McAllister's command to fetch a couple of hundred of the best dancers,
male and female, in the village. And dance they did, for two mortal
hours, under that broiling sun. They did not love him for it, and little
he cared, in the end dismissing them with abuse and sneers.

The abject servility of those magnificent savages was terrifying. How
could it be? What was the secret of his rule? More and more I puzzled
as the days went by, and though I observed perpetual examples of his
undisputed sovereignty, never a clew was there as to how it was.

One day I happened to speak of my disappointment in failing to trade for
a beautiful pair of orange cowries. The pair was worth five pounds
in Sydney if it was worth a cent. I had offered two hundred sticks
of tobacco to the owner, who had held out for three hundred. When I
casually mentioned the situation, McAllister immediately sent for the
man, took the shells from him, and turned them over to me. Fifty sticks
were all he permitted me to pay for them. The man accepted the tobacco
and seemed overjoyed at getting off so easily. As for me, I resolved to
keep a bridle on my tongue in the future. And still I mulled over the
secret of McAllister's power. I even went to the extent of asking
him directly, but all he did was to cock one eye, look wise, and take
another drink.

One night I was out fishing in the lagoon with Oti, the man who had
been mulcted of the cowries. Privily, I had made up to him an additional
hundred and fifty sticks, and he had come to regard me with a respect
that was almost veneration, which was curious, seeing that he was an old
man, twice my age at least.

"What name you fella kanaka all the same pickaninny?" I began on him.
"This f