XII DIRTY JOHNSTONE 165 
nothing, and it is trying to have to wear a perpetual 
smile. 
When I got back I found a black girl dry-rubbing 
her teeth with my tooth-brush I It had evidently done 
duty as a hair-brush as well, judging from the look of 
it, but these are trifles, though the tooth-brush did 
happen to be the only one that I had with me. The 
natives were dancing in front of the fires, the light 
playing fantastically on the savage faces of the men, 
and it was long past three in the morning before I went 
to bed — most dissipated hours to keep in these out-of- 
the-way lands, but time is of no account to these people, 
and, even when I did go, I left an old native still tracing 
a pattern with a sharp-pointed piece of hot stick to 
work on a bamboo pipe — bau-baus they call them. 
These they pass from one to another in smoking as 
common property. 
Our time at Murray Island too soon came to an 
end, and with the tide in our favour, we reached Darn- 
ley Island in four hours. "Jack the Mamoose," of 
royal descent, came off in his boat for us, and we went 
on shore in grand style, rowed by the black police, who 
get their uniform and a pound a year from Government, 
and look upon themselves as great swells ; they keep 
order on the islands and are useful in many ways. 
The only white man living here is one called " Dirty 
Johnstone," and well he deserves his name. It was to 
his house that we first went A few days before, he had 
written to Mr. Bruce, saying that a mysterious stranger 
in the form of a male being had suddenly appeared in 
the island, and Chief-Inspector Savage had come to in- 
quire into this, thinking it was an ill-treated black boy 
from a bSche-de-mer boat, or a man the police were 
looking for, who had stolen a cutter. The men on the 
native boat knew nothing, their faces were perfectly blank 
Digitized by LnOOQ IC 
