Island Nights Entertainments | Page 9

house: the
river divided them, some were on the near side, some on the far, and
one on a boulder in the midst; and they all sat silent, wrapped in their
sheets, and stared at me and my house as straight as pointer dogs. I
thought it strange as I went out. When I had bathed and come back
again, and found them all there, and two or three more along with them,
I thought it stranger still. What could they see to gaze at in my house, I
wondered, and went in.
But the thought of these starers stuck in my mind, and presently I came
out again. The sun was now up, but it was still behind the cape of

woods. Say a quarter of an hour had come and gone. The crowd was
greatly increased, the far bank of the river was lined for quite a way -
perhaps thirty grown folk, and of children twice as many, some
standing, some squatted on the ground, and all staring at my house. I
have seen a house in a South Sea village thus surrounded, but then a
trader was thrashing his wife inside, and she singing out. Here was
nothing: the stove was alight, the smoke going up in a Christian manner;
all was shipshape and Bristol fashion. To be sure, there was a stranger
come, but they had a chance to see that stranger yesterday, and took it
quiet enough. What ailed them now? I leaned my arms on the rail and
stared back. Devil a wink they had in them! Now and then I could see
the children chatter, but they spoke so low not even the hum of their
speaking came my length. The rest were like graven images: they
stared at me, dumb and sorrowful, with their bright eyes; and it came
upon me things would look not much different if I were on the platform
of the gallows, and these good folk had come to see me hanged.
I felt I was getting daunted, and began to be afraid I looked it, which
would never do. Up I stood, made believe to stretch myself, came down
the verandah stair, and strolled towards the river. There went a short
buzz from one to the other, like what you hear in theatres when the
curtain goes up; and some of the nearest gave back the matter of a pace.
I saw a girl lay one hand on a young man and make a gesture upward
with the other; at the same time she said something in the native with a
gasping voice. Three little boys sat beside my path, where, I must pass
within three feet of them. Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved
heads and bits of top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on
a chimney- piece. Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges. I
came up hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant
business; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the three
faces. Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran for his
mammy. The other two, trying to follow suit, got foul, came to ground
together bawling, wriggled right out of their sheets mother-naked, and
in a moment there were all three of them scampering for their lives and
singing out like pigs. The natives, who would never let a joke slip, even
at a burial, laughed and let up, as short as a dog's bark.
They say it scares a man to be alone. No such thing. What scares him in
the dark or the high bush is that he can't make sure, and there might be

an army at his elbow. What scares him worst is to be right in the midst
of a crowd, and have no guess of what they're driving at. When that
laugh stopped, I stopped too. The boys had not yet made their offing,
they were still on the full stretch going the one way, when I had already
gone about ship and was sheering off the other. Like a fool I had come
out, doing my five knots; like a fool I went back again. It must have
been the funniest thing to see, and what knocked me silly, this time no
one laughed; only one old woman gave a kind of pious moan, the way
you have heard Dissenters in their chapels at the sermon.
"I never saw such fools of Kanakas as your people here," I said once to
Uma, glancing out of the window at the starers.
"Savvy nothing," says Uma, with a kind of disgusted air that she was
good at.
And that was all the talk we had upon the matter, for