“But they didn’t come on very much.  I began to suspect why.  ’Jimmy Goggles,’ I says, ‘it’s your beauty does it.’  I was inclined to be a little lightheaded, I think, with all these dangers about and the change in the pressure of the blessed air.  ‘Who’re ye staring at?’ I said, as if the savages could hear me.  ’What d’ye take me for?  I’m hanged if I don’t give you something to stare at,’ I said, and with that I screwed up the escape valve and turned on the compressed air from the belt, until I was swelled out like a blown frog.  Regular imposing it must have been.  I’m blessed if they’d come on a step; and presently one and then another went down on their hands and knees.  They didn’t know what to make of me, and they was doing the extra polite, which was very wise and reasonable of them.  I had half a mind to edge back seaward and cut and run, but it seemed too hopeless.  A step back and they’d have been after me.  And out of sheer desperation I began to march towards them up the beach, with slow, heavy steps, and waving my blown-out arms about, in a dignified manner.  And inside of me I was singing as small as a tomtit.

“But there’s nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over a difficulty,—­I’ve found that before and since.  People like ourselves, who’re up to diving dresses by the time we’re seven, can scarcely imagine the effect of one on a simple-minded savage.  One or two of these niggers cut and run, the others started in a great hurry trying to knock their brains out on the ground.  And on I went as slow and solemn and silly-looking and artful as a jobbing plumber.  It was evident they took me for something immense.

“Then up jumped one and began pointing, making extraordinary gestures to me as he did so, and all the others began sharing their attention between me and something out at; sea.  ‘What’s the matter now?’ I said.  I turned slowly on account of my dignity, and there I saw, coming round a point, the poor old Pride of Banya towed by a couple of canoes.  The sight fairly made me sick.  But they evidently expected some recognition, so I waved my arms in a striking sort of non-committal manner.  And then I turned and stalked on towards the trees again.  At that time I was praying like mad, I remember, over and over again:  ’Lord help me through with it!  Lord help me through with it!’ It’s only fools who know nothing of danger can afford to laugh at praying.”

“But these niggers weren’t going to let me walk through and away like that.  They started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort of pressed me to take a pathway that lay through the trees.  It was clear to me they didn’t take me for a British citizen, whatever else they thought of me, and for my own part I was never less anxious to own up to the old country.