dolly, and a china pug
dog with a tail that keeps wagging after you have touched it,
and some beads. It was such fun. There is so little to do on
board that every one gets wearied, and wants a bit of fun to
pass the hours away....

And now, dear little friend, good-bye. Be good and brave, and
hurry putting your pennies in the bank so that you can come to
see us and stay a long time. Janie sends her compliments to you
and to all, and says, "Do not forget us." So say I.

Joyful days in Ratcliffe's life were these when letters arrived from Ma,
"bang, bang from the wilds," as she said. In all she spoke of the
mysterious secret. "Now, sonny," she would say, "do you remember our
little secret treaty? I do, and keep it. There is a telephone and a
telegraph, secret, wireless, swift, which never fails, and it carries to
Canary _via_ the Kingdom of God." Or this, "Are you remembering our old
secret? Dear old sweet-heart, so am I, and I get surer and surer than
ever for the BEST. Keep on!"

Sometimes Ratcliffe wrote in reply, sometimes his mother or auntie, but
always there was a message to say that "the secret was being kept."

Ratcliffe liked to hear about the children and their doings and about
the teeming life of the forest, "cunning things among insects and
beautiful flies and butterflies and small creatures among the bushes
glistening like fine stones or flowers," but best of all he loved the
snake stories like this:

One night in the dark there came up to my ears small screams
from below. Janie was jumping about and Annie and she were
throwing things, and by the light of the fire it looked awful.
Janie laughed back to my screams, "It is a snake, don't come,"
and she was lashing all she was able with a stick. Annie was
making noise, and not much more. I got round in my slow way to
the outside. Janie had forced it back till she and Annie and
Maggie were all on the outside and could run, but Janie held on,
and I threw her a machete and she hacked the things into bits.
In the morning the bits were all gone, some other beast had
eaten it, and there were only marks. Another day Janie was
chasing with the others a horrid thing we call Asawuri. I don't
know what it is in scientific English. It makes a long oo-o-oo-o
of a note and lives in the bush in a hole. It is bigger than a
lizard and marked handsomely like a snake, and has a deadl