g-place.

I should tell you that after I began to go in the woods, although no one
offered to come near my store, I found people willing enough to pass the
time of day with me where nobody could see them; and as I had begun to
pick up native, and most of them had a word or two of English, I began
to hold little odds and ends of conversation, not to much purpose to be
sure, but they took off the worst of the feeling, for it's a miserable
thing to be made a leper of.

It chanced one day towards the end of the month, that I was sitting in
this bay in the edge of the bush, looking east, with a Kanaka. I had
given him a fill of tobacco, and we were making out to talk as best we
could; indeed, he had more English than most.

I asked him if there was no road going eastward.

"One time one road," said he. "Now he dead."

"Nobody he go there?" I asked.

"No good," said he. "Too much devil he stop there."

"Oho!" says I, "got-um plenty devil, that bush?"

"Man devil, woman devil; too much devil," said my friend. "Stop there
all-e-time. Man he go there, no come back."

I thought if this fellow was so well posted on devils and spoke of them
so free, which is not common, I had better fish for a little information
about myself and Uma.

"You think me one devil?" I asked.

"No think devil," said he soothingly. "Think all-e-same fool."

"Uma, she devil?" I asked again.

"No, no; no devil. Devil stop bush," said the young man.

I was looking in front of me across the bay, and I saw the hanging front
of the woods pushed suddenly open, and Case, with a gun in his hand,
step forth into the sunshine on the black beach. He was got up in light
pyjamas, near white, his gun sparkled, he looked mighty conspicuous; and
the land-crabs scuttled from all round him to their holes.

"Hullo, my friend!" says I, "you no talk all-e-same true. Ese he go, he
come back."

"Ese no all-e-same; Ese _Tiapolo_," says my friend; and, with a
"Good-bye," slunk off among the trees.

I watched Case all round the beach, where the tide was low; and let him
pass me on the homeward way to Falesa. He was in deep thought, and the
birds seemed to know it, trotting quite near him on the sand, or
wheeling and calling in his ears. When he passed me I could see by the
working of his lips that he was talking to himself, and, what pleased me
mightily, he had still my trade mark on his brow. I tell you the plain
truth: I had a mind to give him a gunful in his