e a cigarette. They sat on the
rude box covered with a black cloth and passed the pandanus-wrapped
tobacco about. Naked, except for loin-cloths, their tawny skins
gleaming wet in the gray light, rings of tattooing about their eyes,
they made a strange picture against the jungle growth.

They were without fire for they had got into a deep place crossing
the stream and had wet their matches. I handed a box through the bars,
and by reckless use of the few words of Marquesan I recalled, and
bits of French they knew, helped out by scraps of Spanish one had
gained from the Chilean murderer who milked the cows for the German
trader, I learned that the corpse was that of a woman of sixty years,
whose agonies had been soothed by the ritual of the Catholic church.
The bearers were taking her to Calvary cemetery on the hill.

Their cigarettes smoked, they rose and took up the long poles on
which the coffin was swung. Moving with the tread of panthers, firm,
noiseless, and graceful, they disappeared into the forest and I was
left alone with the morning sun and the glistening leaves of the
rain-wet breadfruit-trees.

On the beach an hour later I met Gedge, who asked me with a
quizzical eye how I had enjoyed my first night among the Kanakas. I
replied that I had seldom passed such a night, spoke glowingly of
the forest and the stream, and said that I was still determined to
remain behind when the schooner sailed.

"Well, if you will stay," said he, and the trader's look came into
his eye, "I've got just the thing you want. You don't want to lie
on a mat where the thousand-legs can get you--and if they get you,
you die. You want to live right. Now listen to me; I got the best
brass bed ever a king slept on. Double thickness, heavy brass bed,
looks like solid gold. Springs that would hold the schooner,
double-thick mattress, sheets and pillows all embroidered like it
belonged to a duchess. Fellow was going to be married that I brought
it for, but now he's lying up there in Calvary in a bed they dug for
him. I'll let you have it cheap--three hundred francs. It's worth
double. What do you say?"

A brass bed, a golden bed in the cannibal islands!

"It's a go," I said.

On the deck of the _Morning Star_ I beheld the packing-cases brought
up from the hold, and my new purchase with all its parts and
appurtenances loaded in a ship's boat, with the iron box that held
my gold. So I arrived in Atuona for the second time, high astride th