ller
corn--lest it be broken down and spoiled. Yet all went well, for the
verses turned out not badly and the corn stood as straight as I could
have wished it to do.

"The banana patch is pretty well cleared, but it is difficult to keep
men at work there. 'Too many devils, me 'fraid,' explained Lafaele
when he came back sooner than I had anticipated. There are devils
everywhere in the bush, it is said; creatures that take on the
semblance of man and kill those with whom they converse, but our
banana patch seems to be exceptionally cursed with the presence of
these demons."

Indeed, to be alone in the jungle is a solemn thing, even for people
of stronger mentality than the superstitious natives. The vegetation
is so dense that there are no shadows, and, the location of the sun
being an unsolvable mystery, one becomes affected by a strange lost
feeling. The loneliness, the silence, the impossibility of seeing far
into the surrounding wall of foliage, all oppress the soul, and
strange alarms attack the most hardy. Then at night, when there is no
moon and the darkness is thick, a phosphorescent light, due to
decaying wood, shines fearsomely all about on the ground, so that it
seems, as Louis said, "like picking one's way over the mouth of hell."
"We ourselves," writes Mrs. Stevenson, "have become infected with the
native fear of the spirits. Louis has been cutting a path in the bush,
and he confesses that the sight of anything like a human figure would
send him flying like the wind with his heart in his mouth. One night
the world seemed full of strange supernatural noises. When Louis
whispered 'Listen! What's that?' I felt as though cold water had been
poured down my back, but it was only the hissing of a fire in the
clearing. The same night we were waked by sounds of terror in the
henhouse. Paul, Louis, and I ran out with one accord, but could see
nothing. In the morning we found the body of a pullet with its heart
torn out. Simile says that the murderer is a certain small and
beautiful bird, but we were quite in the mood to believe it an
_aitu_."

Notwithstanding the slow progress caused by inefficient help and the
difficulty of getting materials up the steep road to their plantation,
they could see their home gradually growing around them. Mr.
Stevenson's health was better than it had been since their marriage,
and a deep content settled gently upon their long-harassed spirits.
Something of this is reflected in an e