ort--biff--just as if It had been chopped off.

That was the end of my village hunting. Let the prisoner of Prana Beach
drown in his hole when the rains come, let his treasure remain unlifted
till Gabriel blows his trumpet; but let yours truly bask in the shade of
the beach ebony, hidden from view, and fortified by dynamite--until the
satinwood shallop should see fit to return and take him off.

Except for a queer dream (queer because of the time and place, and
because there seemed absolutely nothing to suggest it to the mind
asleep), I put in six hours' solid sleep. In my dream I was in Lombardy
in a dark loft where there were pears laid out to ripen; and we were
frightened and had to keep creepy-mouse still--because the father had
come home sooner than was expected, and was milking his goats in the
stable under the loft, and singing, which showed that he was in liquor,
and not his usual affable, bland self. I could hear him plainly in my
dream, tearing the heart out of that old folk-song called _La
Smortina_--"The Pale Girl":

"T' ho la scia to e son contento
Non m'in cresca niente, niente
Altro giovine hogia in mente
Pin belino assai di te."

And I woke up tingling with the remembered fear (it was a mixed feeling,
half fright, and half an insane desire to burst out laughing to see what
the old man would do), and I looked over the rim of my hat, and there
walking toward me, in the baby-blue and pink of the bright dawn (but a
big way off), came a straggling line of naked niggers, headed by the
It-god, Itself.

One look told me that, one look at a great bulk of scarletness, that
walked upright like a man. I didn't look twice, I scuttled out to my
nearest mine, lighted the fuse, tumbled back into the hollow, fingers in
ears, face screwed up as tight as a face can be screwed, and waited.

When it was over, and things had stopped falling, I looked out again.
The tropic dawn remained as before, but the immediate landscape was
somewhat altered for the worse, and in the distance were neither niggers
nor the god. It is possible that I stuck my thumbs into my armpits and
waggled my fingers. I don't remember. But it's no mean sensation to have
pitted yourself against a strange god, with perfectly round heels, and
to have won out.

About noon, though, the god came back, fortified perhaps by reflection,
and more certainly by a nigger who walked behind him with a spear.
You've seen the donkey boys i