could
conjecture, some two months. Although not completely recovered from my
strange illness, which still lingered about me, I was free from pain
and able to take exercise. In short, I had every reason to anticipate a
perfect recovery. Freed from apprehension on this point, and resolved
to regard the future without flinching, I flung myself anew into all the
social pleasures of the valley, and sought to bury all regrets, and
all remembrances of my previous existence in the wild enjoyments it
afforded.

In my various wanderings through the vale, and as I became better
acquainted with the character of its inhabitants, I was more and more
struck with the light-hearted joyousness that everywhere prevailed. The
minds of these simple savages, unoccupied by matters of graver moment,
were capable of deriving the utmost delight from circumstances which
would have passed unnoticed in more intelligent communities. All their
enjoyment, indeed, seemed to be made up of the little trifling incidents
of the passing hour; but these diminutive items swelled altogether to an
amount of happiness seldom experienced by more enlightened individuals,
whose pleasures are drawn from more elevated but rarer sources.

What community, for instance, of refined and intellectual mortals
would derive the least satisfaction from shooting pop-guns? The
mere supposition of such a thing being possible would excite their
indignation, and yet the whole population of Typee did little else for
ten days but occupy themselves with that childish amusement, fairly
screaming, too, with the delight it afforded them.

One day I was frolicking with a little spirited urchin, some six years
old, who chased me with a piece of bamboo about three feet long, with
which he occasionally belaboured me. Seizing the stick from him, the
idea happened to suggest itself, that I might make for the youngster,
out of the slender tube, one of those nursery muskets with which I had
sometimes seen children playing.

Accordingly, with my knife I made two parallel slits in the cane several
inches in length, and cutting loose at one end the elastic strip between
them, bent it back and slipped the point into a little notch made for
the purse. Any small substance placed against this would be projected
with considerable force through the tube, by merely springing the bent
strip out of the notch.

Had I possessed the remotest idea of the sensation this piece of
ordnance was destined to p