watch ticking.

However, the next morning, as we sat at breakfast, Tama appeared, with a
serious and sad expression on his face. He would eat nothing; but,
drawing Old Colonial aside, communicated to him the distressing
intelligence that the watch had _died_ during the night. Without
betraying any amusement, Old Colonial wound up the watch again, and
proceeded to give another lecture on its action to the ancient child.

He went away apparently satisfied, and much lightened in his mind; but
we began to have a fear that the watch would prove an injudicious
present. The next morning Tama appeared again, with the same sad and
serious aspect, this time complicated with a look of intense puzzlement.
He contemplated Old Colonial's hands as he wound up the watch again and
set it going. This was a total mystery to the old fellow. He said he had
been "doing that" to the watch all night long, talking to it, and
telling it not to die. We opined that he had not succeeded in opening
the case of the watch, but had sat twiddling the key about the outside
of it.

The same thing went on day after day. Tama began to grow weak and ill.
He was haggard with anxiety, spending his days in listening to the
regular tick-tick of the watch, and his nights in trying to keep it
alive. In vain he sat up with it night after night, holding it in his
hands, caressing it, wrapping it in warm clothes, and laying it beside
the fire, even, so he told us, reading the Bible and praying for it. In
spite of this generous treatment the watch invariably died about five
o'clock in the morning. Then the miserable proprietor had to take his
boat and row up the eight miles of river that lay between his place and
ours.

At last the old fellow began to get a better idea of the hang of the
thing. He essayed to wind the watch at night, but failed, and in some
indescribable way managed to break the key. Then the charm was
dissolved. Feeling that his health was becoming impaired by his devotion
to this Pakeha fetish, and that consideration finally overcoming his
pride in its possession, he returned the watch to Old Colonial. He said
it was "Kahore pai;" or, as a Scotsman would put it, "no canny."

Tama keeps the guard and seals to wear on festive occasions. But the
watch, no. He has had enough of such silly things. Henceforth, as
formerly, the sun will suffice him for a timekeeper. That is not given
to dying, nor does it require sitting up with at night and such like