do what we pleased. The mere idea has always put my monkey up, and I rapped my speech out pretty big. Then Case translated it—or made believe to, rather—and the first chief replied, and then a second, and a third, all in the same style, easy and genteel, but solemn underneath. Once a question was put to Case, and he answered it, and all hands (both chiefs and commons) laughed out aloud, and looked at me. Last of all, the puckered old fellow and the big young chief that spoke first started in to put Case through a kind of catechism. Sometimes I made out that Case was trying to fence, and they stuck to him like hounds, and the sweat ran down his face, which was no very pleasant sight to me, and at some of his answers the crowd moaned and murmured, which was a worse hearing. It’s a cruel shame I knew no native, for (as I now believe) they were asking Case about my marriage, and he must have had a tough job of it to clear his feet. But leave Case alone; he had the brains to run a parliament. 

 “Well, is that all?” I asked, when a pause came. 

 “Come along,” says he, mopping his face; “I’ll tell you outside.” 

 “Do you mean they won’t take the taboo off?” I cried. 

 “It’s something queer,” said he. “I’ll tell you outside. Better come away.” 

 “I won’t take it at their hands,” cried I. “I ain’t that kind of a man. You don’t find me turn my back on a parcel of Kanakas.” 

 “You’d better,” said Case. 

 He looked at me with a signal in his eye; and the five chiefs looked at me civilly enough, but kind of pointed; and the people looked at me and craned and jostled. I remembered the folks that watched my house, and how the pastor had jumped in his pulpit at the bare sight of me; and the whole business seemed so out of the way that I rose and followed Case. The crowd opened again to let us through, but wider than before, the children on the skirts running and singing out, and as we two white men walked away they all stood and watched us. 

 “And now,” said I, “what is all this about?” 

 “The truth is I can’t rightly make it out myself. They have a down on you,” says Case. 

 “Taboo a man because they have a down on him!” I cried. “I never heard the like.” 

 “It’s worse than that, you see,” said Case. “You ain’t tabooed—I told you that couldn’t 

 Prev. P 20/105 next