eerness of the place it's more difficult to tell of, unless to
one who has been alone in the high bush himself. The brightest kind of a
day it is always dim down there. A man can see to the end of nothing;
whichever way he looks the wood shuts up, one bough folding with another
like the fingers of your hand; and whenever he listens he hears always
something new--men talking, children laughing, the strokes of an axe a
far way ahead of him, and sometimes a sort of a quick, stealthy scurry
near at hand that makes him jump and look to his weapons. It's all very
well for him to tell himself that he's alone, bar trees and birds; he
can't make out to believe it; whichever way he turns the whole place
seems to be alive and looking on. Don't think it was Uma's yarns that
put me out; I don't value native talk a fourpenny-piece; it's a thing
that's natural in the bush, and that's the end of it.

As I got near the top of the hill, for the ground of the wood goes up in
this place steep as a ladder, the wind began to sound straight on, and
the leaves to toss and switch open and let in the sun. This suited me
better; it was the same noise all the time, and nothing to startle.
Well, I had got to a place where there was an underwood of what they
call wild cocoa-nut--mighty pretty with its scarlet fruit--when there
came a sound of singing in the wind that I thought I had never heard the
like of. It was all very fine to tell myself it was the branches; I knew
better. It was all very fine to tell myself it was a bird; I knew never
a bird that sang like that. It rose and swelled, and died away and
swelled again; and now I thought it was like someone weeping, only
prettier; and now I thought it was like harps; and there was one thing I
made sure of, it was a sight too sweet to be wholesome in a place like
that. You may laugh if you like; but I declare I called to mind the six
young ladies that came, with their scarlet necklaces, out of the cave at
Fanga-anaana, and wondered if they sang like that. We laugh at the
natives and their superstitions; but see how many traders take them up,
splendidly educated white men that have been book-keepers (some of them)
and clerks in the old country. It's my belief a superstition grows up in
a place like the different kind of weeds; and as I stood there and
listened to that wailing I twittered in my shoes.

You may call me a coward to be frightened; I thought myself brave enough
to go on ahead. But I went