By the way I am frequently reminded here, as elsewhere, that I am the first white woman to intrude her presence among these primitive people. The women shrink from me, or look askance, and the children run screaming in terror away from me. Once I got the interpreter to inquire of one sweet little lassie of about nine or ten why she had run from me. He brought the child before me, but for a long time she would not say a word. She just stood still, with eyes downcast, and trembling in every limb.
At length she looked quickly up, and shot a hard, swift question at the interpreter.
"No! No! No!" was his reply. "Of course not. Stupid little one! Why do you think such things?"
I asked him what the child had said. He answered that she had asked whether, if she spoke the truth, I was going to flog her.
"Tell her," I said, "that, on the contrary, I will make her a present."
He translated my promise, whereupon the girl, after one quick half-inquiring, half-doubting glance at me, rapped out something that sounded short, solid, and authoritative, like the rat-a-tat-tat of a door-knocker.
Native Boys at Paratau
They were rather shy at having their photographs taken, one even going to the length of covering his face with his arm.
Then it was the interpreter's turn to take refuge in silence. He absolutely declined to translate what she had said, saying that it was too dreadful, was quite unfit for me to hear, &c. &c.