English, but failed
to elicit any response beyond deprecating smiles. I then accosted
them successively in the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and
Portuguese tongues, but with no better results. I began to be very much
puzzled as to what could possibly be the nationality of a white and
evidently civilized race to which no one of the tongues of the great
seafaring nations was intelligible. The oddest thing of all was the
unbroken silence with which they contemplated my efforts to open
communication with them. It was as if they were agreed not to give me
a clue to their language by even a whisper; for while they regarded one
another with looks of smiling intelligence, they did not once open their
lips. But if this behavior suggested that they were amusing themselves
at my expense, that presumption was negatived by the unmistakable
friendliness and sympathy which their whole bearing expressed.

A most extraordinary conjecture occurred to me. Could it be that these
strange people were dumb? Such a freak of nature as an entire race thus
afflicted had never indeed been heard of, but who could say what wonders
the unexplored vasts of the great Southern Ocean might thus far have
hid from human ken? Now, among the scraps of useless information which
lumbered my mind was an acquaintance with the deaf-and-dumb alphabet,
and forthwith I began to spell out with my fingers some of the phrases I
had already uttered to so little effect. My resort to the sign language
overcame the last remnant of gravity in the already profusely smiling
group. The small boys now rolled on the ground in convulsions of mirth,
while the grave and reverend seniors, who had hitherto kept them in
check, were fain momentarily to avert their faces, and I could see their
bodies shaking with laughter. The greatest clown in the world never
received a more flattering tribute to his powers to amuse than had been
called forth by mine to make myself understood. Naturally, however, I
was not flattered, but on the contrary entirely discomfited. Angry I
could not well be, for the deprecating manner in which all, excepting of
course the boys, yielded to their perception of the ridiculous, and the
distress they showed at their failure in self-control, made me seem the
aggressor. It was as if they were very sorry for me, and ready to put
themselves wholly at my service, if I would only refrain from reducing
them to a state of disability by being so exquisitely absu