tion and performing an anticipatory cannibal
dinner-dance. We gradually began to shake off this wearisomely intimate
crowd; the fact that there were two of us, and that I was not alone
in this situation was very comforting. However, in the course of the
next few years I became accustomed to this treatment, though I never
again met it in such crudeness.

We had slowly approached the forest and could get a few glimpses of the
women, who had kept quite in the background and hid still more when
we came near. They had braided aprons around their waists and rolled
mats on their heads. Nearly all of them carried babies on their hips,
and they looked fairly healthy, although the children were full of
sores. Evidently the men did not like our looking at the ladies; they
pushed us back and drove the women away. We returned to the boats,
and the natives retired too, howling, shrieking and laughing. Towards
evening another crowd arrived, and the performance was repeated in
every detail. Happy over the bartered goods, they began to dance,
first decorating themselves with tall branches stuck in the back of
their belts. They jumped from one foot to the other, sometimes turning
round, and singing in a rough, deep monotone. We withdrew to the boats,
and they dispersed on the shore, lighted fires and roasted the yams
they had left.

Far away across the sea there was lightning, the surf boomed more
heavily than by day, the cutter rolled more violently and restlessly
and the whaleboat scraped against her sides, while the wind roared
through the forest gullies and thunder threatened behind the hills. We
felt lonely in the thick darkness, with the tempest approaching
steadily, afloat on a tiny shell, alone against the fury of the
elements. The lamp was blown out, and we lay on deck listening to the
storm, until a heavy squall drove us below, to spend the night in a
stuffy atmosphere, in uncomfortable positions, amid wild dreams. Next
morning there were again about twenty men on the shore, and again the
same performances were gone through. Evidently the people, influenced
by Bourbaki, who was still in the village, were more confident, and
left their weapons behind of their own accord. They came to trade,
and when their provisions of yam were exhausted, most of them left;
only a few, mostly young fellows, wanted to stay, but some older
men stayed with them, so as to prevent them from going on board
and enlisting. Evidently the young men were