t and conspicuous show of peace the warriors discarded their spears
and shields and raised their weaponless hands for me to behold as I
looked down from my high place. The white-haired king broke a spear,
gazing up at me the while, then dropping the pieces knelt and bowed his
slanting forehead to the sands. At his back bent the priests, trailing
their bright feathers in the dust. No one could misunderstand their
pantomime. Men of their tribe had offended the deities. A nation had
come in humility and supplication for forgiveness.

While they made obeisance in relays a group of young men approached the
priests, bearing armfuls of orchids. The king and priests and
orchid-bearers moved forward for a few steps and halted, gazing up
inquiringly at me. This performance was several times repeated before I
understood that they were seeking my consent to approach nearer. Then I
bowed and pointed inward. A rigorous order of precedence was observed,
the aged king keeping his place at their head and his followers their
positions of relative rank. The weight of his years made the royal steps
so slow that the colorful pageant crept like an army of snails.

Suddenly it dawned upon me that if I were to be a god receiving a
delegation of mortals, I should receive it in some suitable degree of
state. They were sending to me the mightiest men of their villages. The
kinky head of their king was abased. Aged Merlins were coming on their
marrow bones, resplendently trailing their feathered finery along the
white and flaring sands. I stood awaiting them in a raveled, mud-smeared
suit of pajamas which at their best had never been ostentatious. The
thing seemed unfit. Evidently these folk inclined to the splendor of
pomp. Jeffersonian simplicity would be lost on them. Their pageant
should be met with pageantry. There had been some who had doubted and
denied me. Of a surety if I were to play this nabob from the skies; if I
were to turn the averted tragedy into a screaming and cheerful farce,
it was my duty to dress the part.

With a signal of raised hands, I signified that they were to await my
reappearance. Then I bowed with profound dignity, and stepping from
their view, disappeared.

A few minutes later I emerged from my cave, a transmogrified being. I
was no longer the derelict of rags and tatters. Mine was the opulent
splendor of a High Mandarin of China. About my fever-wasted frame fell
and flapped the gorgeous folds of the embroidered