“I’ve read a bit about these people in books, but, dear boys, I’d really like to see the grandeur of primitive life in the natural state.” So spake that old man. Then off we went, with the old gent in our company, down the forest track.
“I never did see a place like this,” said O’Hara, as we both gave a startled jump—two dusky, faun-like creatures had suddenly peered through the tasi-ferns and exotic convolvulus festoons, and, seeing our white faces, had given a scream and sped off to their homestead in the pagan village. The old gentleman placed his hand on his heart, took a swill from his brandy-flask, and said it was enough to give one syncope to live in such a blasted heathenland. Then he reshaped his clerical hat, that had been bashed in by a banyan bough, and once more followed us through the interminable growth of camphor, sage-palm, and all that mysterious assemblage of twisting trunks and vines that nature fashions where the sunlight burns with fiery heat.
When we got to the native village the girls, clad in decorative festival costume, were dancing away in full swing. On the forum-lecture-stump that faced the village green stood some pagan philosopher, spouting for all he was worth about the new edict passed by the missionaries—prohibition of rum-selling on Sundays.
“What’s he saying, Soogy?” said I, as that haunting kiddie rushed up to us, for we never could get rid of him. Then Soogy told me, in pigeon English, that the old pagan chief was shouting:
“Down with the brown man’s burden! Down with the cursed white man wrapped in clothes!”
I must admit he looked a nasty old heathen as he put forth his dark chin, lifted his face to the forest roof, and called on the old heathen gods to hear the prayers of their faithful child. When he had finished he took a huge nip from the kava calabash, and the native girls commenced to give a fascinating two-step whilst the next chief oiled his hair and prepared for a speech.
“Now’s your chance!” said I to O’Hara, for the old gentleman seemed in the most convivial of moods as he stared at the dancing maids. I confess that I was not good at giving a hint to a man who had promised fifty pounds if a certain thing was done for him and had apparently forgotten all about his promise. As O’Hara sidled up to the old gentleman’s side, I remained within comfortable earshot.
“Hard times these,” said my pal, as he looked first towards the old man and then towards the dancers. Still the old fellow stared in a vacant way, fingered and readjusted his pince-nez as the stout chiefess did a most peculiar somersault while performing the heathen tango. O’Hara got desperate; it got on his mettle to be ignored like that. He sidled up a little closer to the old man, and I distinctly heard him say, as he stared in an absentminded way in front of himself: “Hard times these; wish there was a chance of getting fifty pounds, somehow!”
It wanted some pluck to give a hint like that, I can tell you. The old fellow had a freezing way with him too. Polish does hang on one when one is born where the missing bank-managers hail from. Yet O’Hara did the trick; for the old fellow stared on for a long time as though he’d not heard a word, then he turned quietly to my comrade and said: “I suppose you really could get me safely away to Lakemba, so that I could catch the next boat?”
O’Hara at once unfolded part of his scheme to the old chap, who seemed mighty pleased at the way O’Hara presented the matter to him. The scheme was that we should hire one of the large, full outrigger-canoes from the natives, and paddle the old man across the mile or so of ocean that separated us from Lakemba. We happened to know that at Lakemba there was a schooner due to sail for Honolulu, and the old fellow knew as well as we that it was an easy matter to get a boat from Honolulu to San Francisco. So the matter was arranged.