Fishing is so civil a pastime that they at once threw down their burdens and squatted near the fellow.
A more hideous savage Kep had not yet beheld. Tattooed all over the body, peleles in his ears, a ring of gold attached to one nostril, and the upper lip slit in two to show his terrible red-stained triangular teeth.
One glance at that mouth, and his black hide spotted with red paint, proclaimed him a cannibal.
He clutched his bunch of poisoned arrows, and started to his feet.
"Sit down, my friend," said McTavish coolly. "I could lift you by the neck, man, and throw you across the boulders into the centre stream. Sit down, friend, and tell me all about yourself."
This chief grumblingly obeyed.
He had in his youth been kidnapped to Queensland and knew the white man's speech.
Strangely enough this fellow, like all who have come back from civilization to their native fastnesses, are the fiercest and most wily savages of all.
"What fob you callee me 'fliend'? I not lub de Engleese.
"The natives are all friends of mine."