him a piece of land next the lagoon, where he
pitched his tents and lived; and they put a taboo round the land so that
none might cross, and also a notice on a board, saying, "Be careful of
the white man." Here he unpacked his things, and arranged a place for
Billy Hindoo, and another place, open at the sides, where at a table he
was daily served with sardines and bottled beer. He was named Professor,
and his occupation, unlike that of all other white men, was to look at
dead fish through bits of glass. He was a man of no kindness nor
accomplishments, meanly solitary, and, in spite of two pairs of
spectacles worn the one on the other, he was almost blind besides. Were
you to come near him, he would scream out, "No, no!" Were you even to
touch his bits of glass, or finger his sticky shadow pictures in the
pool, he would run at you, crying, "No, no!" Were you to approach him as
he bathed in the lagoon, marveling at his unsightliness, he would beat
the water like one delirious, and scream again, "No, no!" So, in time,
his name became changed from Professor into No No, or, as many called
him in one word, Professor No No; and we all grew to hate him, as did
also Billy Hindoo, who was generous and loving, and gave away
unstintedly sardines and biscuit to those he favored.

But Professor No No, unexpectedly returning in his boat with a new dead
fish no bigger than that (a fish, too, of so little worth that one
couldn't eat it without feeling ill for the succeeding week), discovered
Billy Hindoo dividing a tin of biscuit among the girls with whom he had
made friends. The rage of Professor No No was without limit, and he ran
at Billy Hindoo and choked him with his hairy hands, and beat him over
the body with a stick, and drove him away with execrations. Then he sat
down at the table and drank bottled beer, and held up the fish to his
blind eyes, and at intervals shouted out, "No, no; No, no," as we all
crowded about the taboo line, watching and wondering.

The next day Billy Hindoo came back, but Professor No No repelled him
with a stick, having counted the beer and the sardines and the biscuit,
and found many missing. Then Billy Hindoo sought a place in the house of
Tamua, and being a man of subtle mind, though without paper on which to
write, carved the date of his rejection on a tree, together with the
names of witnesses who had seen him struck. He would fain have brought
suit against his master before the ancients, but they