Floyd could hear his voice, and it was strange enough to see him standing there and seemingly addressing the trees.
Mountain Joe also put in a word now and then as if on his own account.
The effect was absolutely negative, and Floyd expected to see them turn and come back.
But Schumer knew the native mind and its ways, and he did not seem the least disconcerted at his failure. He paused in his oration, walked up and down a bit, and then began to talk again.
Presently, not from the trees before him, but from the trees at the left-hand side of the grove, a native appeared. He stood for a moment, now resting on one foot, now on the other. Then he said a few words, to which Schumer replied.
They kept this up for a minute or so, and then, from the wood, another native joined the first, then another and another.
"They are all right now," cried Schumer to Floyd. "Come up and help to jaw them. Leave your gun behind."
Floyd handed his rifle to one of the men and came right up to the group of natives before whom Schumer was now standing. He was talking to them, to use his own expression, like a Dutch uncle. Talking as only he knew how.
The Polynesian native, pick him up in most places, has a good deal of humor in his composition. He can both feel and use sarcasm. He has over and above this a certain bonhomie, a good spirit readily worked if one knows how.
Schumer knew how. He did not speak them fair by any means. He told them what was in his mind about them, told them they were pigs who would have dashed to their own destruction but for his arrival, yet told them it in a way that did not stir resentment.