s.

A little farther on I found the best curiosity of the museum. The first
I saw of it was a longish mound of earth with a twist to it. Digging off
the earth with my hands, I found underneath tarpaulin stretched on
boards, so that this was plainly the roof of a cellar. It stood right on
the top of the hill, and the entrance was on the far side, between two
rocks, like the entrance to a cave. I went as far in as the bend, and,
looking round the corner, saw a shining face. It was big and ugly, like
a pantomime mask, and the brightness of it waxed and dwindled, and at
times it smoked.

"Oho!" says I, "luminous paint!"

And I must say I rather admired the man's ingenuity. With a box of tools
and a few mighty simple contrivances he had made out to have a devil of
a temple. Any poor Kanaka brought up here in the dark, with the harps
whining all round him, and shown that smoking face in the bottom of a
hole, would make no kind of doubt but he had seen and heard enough
devils for a lifetime. It's easy to find out what Kanakas think. Just go
back to yourself any way round from ten to fifteen years old, and
there's an average Kanaka. There are some pious, just as there are pious
boys; and the most of them, like the boys again, are middling honest,
and yet think it rather larks to steal, and are easy scared, and rather
like to be so. I remember a boy I was at school with at home who played
the Case business. He didn't know anything, that boy; he couldn't do
anything; he had no luminous paint and no Tyrolean harps; he just boldly
said he was a sorcerer, and frightened us out of our boots, and we loved
it. And then it came in my mind how the master had once flogged that
boy, and the surprise we were all in to see the sorcerer catch it and
bum like anybody else. Thinks I to myself, "I must find some way of
fixing it so for Master Case." And the next moment I had my idea.

I went back by the path, which, when once you had found it, was quite
plain and easy walking; and when I stepped out on the black sands, who
should I see but Master Case himself! I cocked my gun and held it handy,
and we marched up and passed without a word, each keeping the tail of
his eye on the other; and no sooner had we passed than we each wheeled
round like fellows drilling, and stood face to face. We had each taken
the same notion in his head, you see, that the other fellow might give
him the load of his gun in the stern.

"You've shot nothing," says Ca