116 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



was finished he stretched his arms over the gun and 

 tried to touch a fiddle that lay within his reach. This 

 was handed to him, and he examined it most care- 

 fully, inside and out, playing with the strings and 

 rapping the wood, with a smile of childish delight 

 on his face. All that evening he listened with the 

 same rapt attention, as though a passionate love of 

 harmony had suddenly dawned on his savage soul, 

 seeming oblivious of the fate which a day or two 

 might bring him. 



But the charms of music had really done little to 

 soothe his savage breast, for only an hour or two 

 later he made a senseless and reckless attack on his 

 sentry. Suddenly seizing a cutlass, which had foolishly 

 been left within his reach, he aimed a desperate blow 

 at this marine, who, fortunately, saw it in time and 

 skipped back. I happened to be close by, and I can 

 see the great savage now lean, wiry, a man of fifty 

 or sixty, with a small bullet head, large rings in his 

 ears and rows of shark's teeth round his neck, an 

 expression of the utmost fercoity on his face, his teeth 

 showing like a wild beast's, his eyes flashing, his chest 

 heaving the cutlass in his hand. No one could go 

 near him, and for a moment it was proposed to shoot 

 him then and there; but our gunner the afore- 

 mentioned Barter seized a rammer from overhead, and 

 with a sudden thrust threw the chief on his back, 

 when, in a moment, the sentry and some others flung 

 themselves on him, wrenched away the cutlass, and 

 left him lying with his forehead streaming with blood 

 where the rammer had struck him. This was bandagi 

 up, and he lay quiet until washing decks roused hii 

 out in the morning. 



