But the thing that troubled me was nearer hand.  Some dozen young men and children made a piece of a half-circle, flanking my house:  the river divided them, some were on the near side, some on the far, and one on a boulder in the midst; and they all sat silent, wrapped in their sheets, and stared at me and my house as straight as pointer dogs.  I thought it strange as I went out.  When I had bathed and come back again, and found them all there, and two or three more along with them, I thought it stranger still.  What could they see to gaze at in my house, I wondered, and went in.

But the thought of these starers stuck in my mind, and presently I came out again.  The sun was now up, but it was still behind the cape of woods.  Say a quarter of an hour had come and gone.  The crowd was greatly increased, the far bank of the river was lined for quite a way — perhaps thirty grown folk, and of children twice as many, some standing, some squatted on the ground, and all staring at my house.  I have seen a house in a South Sea village thus surrounded, but then a trader was thrashing his wife inside, and she singing out.  Here was nothing:  the stove was alight, the smoke going up in a Christian manner; all was shipshape and Bristol fashion.  To be sure, there was a stranger come, but they had a chance to see that stranger yesterday, and took it quiet enough.  What ailed them now?  I leaned my arms on the rail and stared back.  Devil a wink they had in them!  Now and then I could see the children chatter, but they spoke so low not even the hum of their speaking came my length.  The rest were like graven images:  they stared at me, dumb and sorrowful, with their bright eyes; and it came upon me things would look not much different if I were on the platform of the gallows, and these good folk had come to see me hanged.

I felt I was getting daunted, and began to be afraid I looked it, which would never do.  Up I stood, made believe to stretch myself, came down the verandah stair, and strolled towards the river.  There went a short buzz from one to the other, like what you hear in theatres when the curtain goes up; and some of the nearest gave back the matter of a pace.  I saw a girl lay one hand on a young man and make a gesture upward with the other; at the same time she said something in the native with a gasping voice.  Three little boys sat beside my path, where, I must pass within three feet of them.  Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved heads and bits of top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on a chimney-piece.  Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges.  I came up hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant business; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the three faces.  Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran for his mammy.  The other two, trying to follow suit, got foul, came to ground together bawling, wriggled right out of their sheets mother-naked, and in a moment there were all three of them scampering for their lives and singing out like pigs.  The natives, who would never let a joke slip, even at a burial, laughed and let up, as short as a dog’s bark.