carelessly in the main cabin or partly conceals in his own berth, so
that the king shall spy it for himself. "How much you want?" inquires
Tembinok', passing and pointing. "No, king; that too dear," returns the
trader. "I think I like him," says the king. This was a bowl of
gold-fish. On another occasion it was scented soap. "No, king; that cost
too much," said the trader; "too good for a Kanaka." "How much you got?
I take him all," replied his majesty, and became the lord of seventeen
boxes at two dollars a cake. Or again, the merchant feigns the article
is not for sale, is private property, an heirloom or a gift; and the
trick infallibly succeeds. Thwart the king and you hold him. His
autocratic nature rears at the affront of opposition. He accepts it for
a challenge; sets his teeth like a hunter going at a fence; and with no
mark of emotion, scarce even of interest, stolidly piles up the price.
Thus, for our sins, he took a fancy to my wife's dressing-bag, a thing
entirely useless to the man, and sadly battered by years of service.
Early one forenoon he came to our house, sat down, and abruptly offered
to purchase it. I told him I sold nothing, and the bag at any rate was a
present from a friend; but he was acquainted with these pretexts from of
old, and knew what they were worth and how to meet them. Adopting what I
believe is called "the object method," he drew out a bag of English
gold, sovereigns and half-sovereigns, and began to lay them one by one
in silence on the table; at each fresh piece reading our faces with a
look. In vain I continued to protest I was no trader; he deigned not to
reply. There must have been twenty pounds on the table, he was still
going on, and irritation had begun to mingle with our embarrassment,
when a happy idea came to our delivery. Since his majesty thought so
much of the bag, we said, we must beg him to accept it as a present. It
was the most surprising turn in Tembinok's experience. He perceived too
late that his persistence was unmannerly; hung his head a while in
silence: then, lifting up a sheepish countenance, "I 'shamed," said the
tyrant. It was the first and the last time we heard him own to a flaw in
his behaviour. Half an hour after he sent us a camphor-wood chest, worth
only a few dollars--but then heaven knows what Tembinok' had paid for
it.

Cunning by nature, and versed for forty years in the government of men,
it must not be supposed that he is cheated blindly, or ha