all the children ran about playing in the
middle of the trouble, and I dare say took no more notice of the war
than you children in London do of a general election. But sometimes, at
general elections, English children may get run over by processions in
the street; and it chanced that as little Arick was running about in the
bush, and very busy about his playing, he ran into the midst of the
warriors on the other side. These speared him with a poisoned spear; and
his own people, when they had found him lying for dead, and in order to
cure him of the poison, cut him up with knives that were probably made
of fish-bones.

This is a very savage piece of child-life, and Arick, for all his
good-nature, is still a very savage person. I have told you how the
black boys sometimes run away from the plantations, and live behind
alone in the forest, building little sheds to protect them from the
rain, and sometimes planting little gardens of food, but for the most
part living the best they can upon the nuts of the trees and yams that
they dig with their hands out of the earth. I do not think there can be
anywhere in the world people more wretched than these runaways. They
cannot return, for they would only return to be punished. They can never
hope to see again their own land or their own people--indeed, I do not
know what they can hope, but just to find enough yams every day to keep
them from starvation. And in the wet season of the year, which is our
summer and your winter, and the rain falls day after day far harder and
louder than the loudest thunder-plump that ever fell in England, and the
noon is sometimes so dark that the lean man is glad to light his lamp to
write by, I can think of nothing so dreary as the state of these poor
runaway slaves in the houseless bush. You are to remember, besides, that
the people of this island hate and fear them because they are cannibals,
sit and tell tales of them about their lamps at night in their own
comfortable houses, and are sometimes afraid to lie down to sleep if
they think there is a lurking black boy in the neighbourhood. Well now,
Arick is of their own race and language, only he is a little more lucky
because he has not run away; and how do you think that he proposed to
help them? He asked if he might not have a gun. "What do you want with a
gun, Arick?" was asked. And he said quite simply, and with his nice
good-natured smile, that if he had a gun he would go up into the high
bu