“Hallo!” I said. “There’s another of your singlets going; you won’t have enough clothes to carry you back to Port Moresby, at this rate.” For the Marquis, being big and fat, stretched his clothes terribly, and, in consequence, they were wearing very fast.
“I do feel like a cool window in my back; have a look, kindly,” he said, trying to see over his own shoulder.
I looked at his back. “Mark,” I said, “take off your singlet and look at it. I don’t like this.”
I had to peel him out of it, for it had shrunk and was tight. When he was clear, and had the garment on his knee, he gave it one glance and then looked at me.
“My friend, as I said yesterday, we are in deep waters,” he remarked. “This, while I lay asleep, has been cut. This cut, it has taken out a piece, and the piece is the same size as——”
“As the piece out of the girl’s belt,” I finished.
We looked at each other; the leather-necks squawked outside; the dogs of the village began that peculiarly mournful, wolf-like howling that native dogs always do set up about sunset.
“And the girl, the little beautiful, that night she died,” observed the Marquis. He whistled softly to himself: an air I did not know—a crying, sobbing sort of tune it was, and not calculated to raise any one’s spirits if they had needed it—which I should have thought the Marquis’ might.
“See, I will dance her requiem,” he said. “Perhaps my own, good Flint. One never knows.”
Singing the air gently to himself—I can not describe how mournful and calling-you-to-come-back it sounded, or how the horrid wailing of the native dogs chimed in and became a part—he danced, in the twelve-by-fourteen space of the tent.... I have seen something like it in the Islands, when the warriors were dancing for the funeral of a great dead chief—something, but not so good. It was grief, and death, and despair put into motion, and translated, by the Marquis’ huge limbs, into a language that even the Papuans themselves would have understood. All, too, as lightly as—as—well, as the feathers waving in the wind upon a hearse.