They led us into the largest house of the village, a ramshackle shanty of a place, with spears and shields hung up on the walls and bamboo shelves to sleep on. It smelled of unwashed nigger, old hay, damp and rain; and you could see the mountain clouds curling and wreathing, through the splits in the crazy floor—very much of the house projecting right out over nothing at all.
Down the hill, like ants coming out of the top of a tall ants’-nest, ran the people of the place, yelling with excitement at our arrival. They had not a stitch of clothes among the lot; even the women were dressed merely in a few small land-shells strung round the neck and a handful of dogs’ teeth fastened like tassels into the hair.
“When we shall leave this place,” remarked the Marquis, “I will take with me a complete costume of one of these women, to carry in my purse all the time, so that I may show it to the delightful English misses when I go to London, and hear them say, ‘Oooh, shocking!’ That is what they love to say, my Flint.”
He looked about the ugly crowd again.
“They are not natural, these people; I do not love them,” he commented. “See, then, how they are every one bended back from the waist like a man who has a tetanus fit, because of the climbing they always do. When we go away from here——”
He looked about again.
“If we go away from here,” he amended, coolly, “you shall see that I will give a lecture to the scientifics in Paris, a most blooming learned lecture.”
“I hope you will, Marky,” I said. We were sitting on the bamboo bed-place now, smoking a little of our cherished tobacco and wondering when or if the Koiroros would give us something to eat. One of the children—rather a pretty little chap of toddling age, who had been half walking, half crawling, on the verge of an appalling precipice as we came up to the village—made its way over to us and began touching our clothes with childish curiosity. The older people watched it, but did not go near; they seemed shy of putting their hands on us.
The Marquis, who was fond of children, caressed the little thing and tried to make friends with him (rather foolishly, I thought) by taking the diamond out of the case in which we carried it, and making it flash. The child looked at it and then retreated, at a call from his mother, striking at the stone as he went. It dropped and we both went after it with a hasty exclamation, as the floor was full of holes. I recovered it and fastened it up again in its case with a bit of string.
“I’ll take my turn now, Marky,” I said, hanging it around my neck. For we had been carrying it day and day about, under our clothes.