rly every native in the village had more than one toe missing.)
And the chief felt obliged to insert his smelly presence among us and
ask innumerable idiotic questions through the medium of his interpreter
and Kazimoto. He received some astonishing answers, but would not have
been satisfied with anything more reasonable. We wanted him satisfied,
and gave our interpreter free rein.

The main trouble was we had nothing of value to offer him. Money was
something he had no knowledge of. He wanted beads of a certain size
and color; for two handfuls of them he expressed himself willing to be
our friend for life. We had to educate him about money, and Kazimoto
assured him that the silver rupees Fred produced from a bag were so
precious that governments went to war to get them away from other
governments.

But the impression still prevailed that we were wasikini--poor men;
and that is a fatal qualification in the savage mind.

"Why have you only one gun?"

In vain Kazimoto assured him that we had dozens of guns "at home"--that
Fred's landed possessions were so vast that two hundred strong men
walking for a month would be unable to march across them--that Fred's
wives (Fred seemed to live under a cloud of sexual scandal in those
days) were so many in number they had to be counted twice a day to make
sure none was missing.

The chief had eighteen wives of his own to show. He could prove his
matrimonial felicity. Why had Fred left his behind? How did he dare?
Who looked after them? Had he left the guns behind to guard the women?
Why did such a rich man travel without food for his men? The chief
had seen us with his own eyes devour porridge as if we were starving.

To have told him the truth would have been worse than useless. To have
mentioned such a thing as shipwreck would only have stirred the savage
instinct to prey off all unfortunates. Failing evidence of wealth in
our possession, the only feasible plan was to claim so much that he
might believe some of it, and it was Coutlass, drawing a bow at a
venture, who ordered Kazimoto to tell him that we expected a party in a
few days bringing tents, provisions and more guns.

"There will be blue-and-white beads of the sort you long for among
those loads," added Kazimoto on his own account; and that eased the
chief's mind for the night. Fred gave him a half-rupee, and promised
him to exchange it when the loads should come for as many of the beads
as he could seiz