“Sure of it, my lad. T’other side ’ll come up and dance a war-dance, and shake their spears at our lot. Then our lot ’ll dance up and down like jack-jumpers, and make faces, and put out their tongues at ’em, and call ’em names. I know their ways; and then they’ll all yell out, and shout; and then the others ’ll dance another war-dance, and shout in Noo Zealandee that they’ll kill and eat us all, and our lot’ll say they’d like to see ’em do it, and that’ll be all.”
Don shook his head. The preparations looked too genuine.
“Ah, you’ll see,” continued Jem. “Then one lot ’ll laugh, and say you’re obliged to go, and t’other lot ’ll come back again, and they’ll call one another more names, and finish off with killing pigs, and eating till they can’t eat no more.”
“You seem to know all about it, Jem.”
“Well, anybody could know as much as that,” said Jem, going to the side and taking up a bundle formed with one of the native blankets, which he began to undo.
“What have you got there?”
“You just wait a minute,” said Jem, with a dry look. “There! Didn’t know that was the arm chest, did you?”
He unrolled and took out a cutlass and two pistols, with the ammunition, and looked up smilingly at Don.
“There!” he said, “what do you think o’ them?”
“I’d forgotten all about them, Jem.”