whole place, or all that you could see of it, a kind of a puzzle of
turning shadows. They came to meet you, solid and quick like giants, and
then span off and vanished; they hove up over your head like clubs, and
flew away into the night like birds. The floor of the bush glimmered
with dead wood, the way the match-box used to shine after you had struck
a lucifer. Big, cold drops fell on me from the branches overhead like
sweat. There was no wind to mention; only a little icy breath of a
land-breeze that stirred nothing; and the harps were silent.

The first landfall I made was when I got through the bush of wild
cocoa-nuts, and came in view of the bogies on the wall. Mighty queer
they looked by the shining of the lantern, with their painted faces and
shell eyes, and their clothes and their hair hanging. One after another
I pulled them all up and piled them in a bundle on the cellar roof, so
as they might go to glory with the rest. Then I chose a place behind one
of the big stones at the entrance, buried my powder and the two shells,
and arranged my match along the passage. And then I had a look at the
smoking head, just for good-bye. It was doing fine.

"Cheer up," says I. "You're booked."

It was my first idea to light up and be getting homeward; for the
darkness and the glimmer of the dead wood and the shadows of the lantern
made me lonely. But I knew where one of the harps hung; it seemed a pity
it shouldn't go with the rest; and at the same time I couldn't help
letting on to myself that I was mortal tired of my employment, and would
like best to be at home and have the door shut. I stepped out of the
cellar and argued it fore and back. There was a sound of the sea far
down below me on the coast; nearer hand not a leaf stirred; I might have
been the only living creature this side of Cape Horn. Well, as I stood
there thinking, it seemed the bush woke and became full of little
noises. Little noises they were, and nothing to hurt--a bit of a
crackle, a bit of a rush--but the breath jumped right out of me and my
throat went as dry as a biscuit. It wasn't Case I was afraid of, which
would have been common-sense; I never thought of Case; what took me, as
sharp as the colic, was the old wives' tales, the devil-women and the
man-pigs. It was the toss of a penny whether I should run: but I got a
purchase on myself, and stepped out, and held up the lantern (like a
fool) and looked all round.

In the direction of the villa