fairly new, and was not so filthy dirty as most Sakai lairs.

'Presently, when the beggars who had run away found out who it was, they
began to come back again. You know their way. First a couple of men came
and looked at us. Then I gave them some baccy, and spoke a word or two
to them in _Se-noi_, that always reassures them. Then they went back and
fetched the others, and presently we were as comfortable as possible,
though we _had_ a dozen Sakai to share our hut with us. Juggins
complained awfully about the uneven flooring of boughs, which you know
is pretty hard lying, and makes one's bones ache as though they were
coming out at the joints, but we had had a tough day of it and I slept
in spite of our hosts. I wonder why it is that Sakai never sleep the
whole night through like Christians. I suppose it is their animal
nature, and that, like the beasts, they are most awake by night. You
know how they lie about in the warm ashes of the fireplaces till they
are black as sweeps, and then _how_ they jabber. It is always a marvel
to me what they find to yarn about. Even we white men run short of our
stock of small-talk unless something happens to keep things going, or
unless we have a beggar like you to jaw to us. They say that Englishmen
talk about their tubs, when they run dry on all other subjects of
conversation, but the Sakai cannot talk about washing, for they never
bathe by any chance, it makes that filthy skin disease they are covered
with itch so awfully. It had rained a bit that night, when they were
hiding away in the jungle, and I could hear their nails going on their
dirty hides whenever I woke, and Juggins told me afterwards that they
kept him awake by their jabber, and that each time he thought they had
settled down for the night, he was disgusted to find that it was only
another false start. Juggins tried to get a specimen of the bacillus
that causes the skin disease, but I don't know whether he succeeded. I
fancy it is due to want of blood. The poor brutes have never had enough
to eat for a couple of hundred generations, and what food they do get is
bloating beastly stuff. They do not get enough salt either, and that
generally leads to skin disease. I have seen little brats, hardly able
to stand, covered with it, the skin peeling off in flakes, and I used to
frighten Juggins out of his senses by telling him that he had caught it,
when his nose peeled with the sun.

'Well, in the morning we got up just in t