There were four or five wooden buildings, into one of which we were taken. Wondres, before he went out, handed us over to the head young man in the room, whom he called Lolomaran, who showed us where we should sleep, and scolded a party of idle starers and chatterers, but did not neglect to stare and chatter himself.

Our house was made up of our own long large sleeping room, and the small adjoining rooms of Mr. Carter and Mr. Wakefield. That of Mr. Wakefield opened on to ours, and he used to see that we swept it clean every day; taking turns according to a list of names which Lolomaran had written, and to which he had added ours; and that we went to sleep punctually at ten o'clock at night (when a bell rang), and got up at six in the morning, when another bell rang-or rather, the same bell rang over again.

He came home that night, tired with pulling backwards and forwards between the vessel and the shore; for he was manager of the boats, and knew all the landing-places in the islands; and there had been thousands of cocoa-nuts and tons of yams to be brought ashore.

Coming into our room to see if we were all right, he paid me a special visit. He stroked my woolly pate, and made me understand that I was to send Cookee some present by him when he went off for the last time, in the morning. He then wished us a general "good-night," said a few cheery words to Lolomaran, and left us to quiet sleep.

Next day we looked round the place. There were, besides our house, the Bishop's, with a long sleeping room across one end of it, and the Chapel across the other; a mysterious and forbidden place to me, in which I was told that the white people and some of the more learned Marianusa men worshipped their God; also, the dining hall; Mr. and Mrs. Selby's house, with its beautiful flower garden; and a house for married people of my own colour, in front of which some little red

petticoated children were playing, the sight of whom sent my thoughts back to Aluni and her little child, whose name she determined should be Dolo, after its father; and I longed to have it there and to dress it in red, and to see both mother and child living a grand clothed life like this. Indeed, I half expected to find Dolo himself in Happy Island, for we believed the spirits of our dead went up the East.

CHAPTER XIII.

REPORTS PROGRESS, AND RECORDS A DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE.

NEXT day we were all assembled, and divided into ten gangs, each under a captain, whom we called a Head Cook; and each gang, in turn, became the general servants of the community for a week.

Mr. Carter looked after the kitchen; Mr. Selby managed the farm; while the Bishop was busy translating, accountkeeping, and letter-writing. There was no such thing as a hired servant.

Let me give you a day's life in a line. Rise at six; chapel at a quarter to seven; breakfast, altogether, black and white (200 of us), in hall at seven; school from eight till half-past nine; then everybody, black and white (except the Bishop and Mr. Carter), turned out to work on the farm till dinner at one; writing-school from two till three; singing for half-anhour with Percy Wakefield; leisure till tea at six; school for an hour; chapel; and bed about ten.

Only those who were instructed went into the Chapel.

On Saturdays we used to fish all day at the foot of the cliffs. I got on very well with my schooling, and in two months' time I came into possession of my own book, a very simple catechism, translated into the Marianusa tongue by Bishop

LEARNING TO WRITE.

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Curwen, and printed by Mr. Selby and his black assistants. On the first page I fondly and crookedly inscribed my name, with a very small P, two enormous goggle-eyed O's, and a cripple of an M. As I look at it now, it reminds me of what Mr. Wakefield likened it to at the time: a very small weak horse dragging a crazy cart with very big wheels to the top of a steep hill, and never getting there.

Learning to write cost me much pains. It was in the afternoon that we used to practise it, first on a slate, and then on a piece of paper and I have now before me my first attempt

at pen and ink strokes, which would have been a great success had I desired to represent fringe, but they are certainly inferior considered as straight lines. The performance also reveals the unfortunate fact that I had adopted the same means of rubbing out upon paper, as I had previously used upon the slate, the result being a superabundance of fog and cloud. The page, too, is ringed with tear stains of perspiration, shed in my tremendous struggles with my mutinous materials, which combined in a malicious conspiracy with my fingers to defeat my ends. Nothing could induce my wrist to lie flat upon the table, but with a trembling aim, like that of a palsied hand trying to pin a fly, I struck the upper line, and, screwing up my mouth, and twisting my body into the most ingeniously uncomfortable shape, I, with my whole arm, drew down the wavering pen. My fingers, before referred to as rebellious, would, besides this, assemble at the pen's point, drink deeply of the ink, and proceed, without concern, to make use of the paper as a napkin.

Below the fringe, which, I must say, is less nibbled and better combed on the last line, there are representations of beheaded worms in their death struggles, which, after much thought, I believe to be intended for a series of i's; and turning over a new leaf we come to a multitude of creatures of most disorderly appearance; some with two legs, and others

with three, all staggering about as if the ink had got into their heads, or their legs, or wherever they keep their brains, like a party of drunken soldiers, trying to form line, and not succeeding. In these characters I have reason to suspect that we have suggestions for m's and n's.

Next comes what looks more like the Commissariat Department than anything else; namely, rows of potatoes in every variety, except perhaps the Kidney one; while at the end of the line we have a grand explosion, which might lead a stranger to the conclusion that I had been trying to draw a civilized battle-I mean one with powder and smoke. Mr. Wakefield suggested Inkermann.

I learned also to cook, and fence, and farm, and print; and we Pombuana people, like the rest of the world, begged a piece of ground from Mr. Selby, with the Bishop's leave, for a garden, in which we planted yams, sweet-potatoes, sugar-cane, corn, water-melons, and sunflowers.

So time passed on, and the word in everybody's mouth was the then, to me, unmeaning one-CHRISTMAS. However, it brought feasting, dancing, and singing, and fishing by moonlight, and was therefore welcome. After the feast we all settled down to school and work again; but when three months had passed, then the word in everybody's mouth was Vaka; and half our party prepared for a voyage to the islands.

I must now tell you that I had secretly made up my mind not to go back yet to Pombuana, and when the last boat went off to the Aurora I gave Mr. Wakefield the slip and remained behind. It nearly cost him his life, for Malagai swore that I was dead; but I had sent him heaps of new treasures through Kiukilu, which consoled him for my loss.

As I watched the vessel set sail I felt how wicked I had been. I was not discovered until tea time, when, of course, there was a plate short. The Head Cook persisted that he had counted right, and so he had.

At last one of my neighbours called out in the Marianusa tongue :

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Pomo, here, has nothing to eat!"

The mention of my humble name never caused such a sensation either before or since. The general hum of voices ceased, and I felt myself to be the focus of the most intense silence and observation.

My shame and fear were so great that I sank under the table; whence I was coaxed forth by Mr. Carter, and urged by a multitude of feet. Mr. Carter was half amused and half annoyed, as well he might be, for he knew the risk Mr. Wakefield would run without me in Pombuana.

However, there I was, and there I must remain. And so ended my first year in the white world.

CHAPTER XIV.

DISCIPLINE.

IN the Reverend Percy Wakefield's absence I saw more of Mr. Carter and of Mr. and Mrs. Selby. I could not get on with Mr. Selby, under whose charge I came chiefly in the farm work. I had risen to be second cook in my gang, and was athirst for an authority which I had neither the weight nor the conscientiousness to maintain, and which had not been given to me. The consequence was that I undertook things which I lacked both the energy and influence to carry out; and so I got into continual trouble; with my fellows for taking too much upon me, and with Mr. Selby for not doing enough.

I can compare myself at this time to nothing more nearly than to sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, and this was quite enough to disgust Mr. Selby, who gradually began to look upon me as a self-conceited, sulky young dog: and he was right; while I on my part set him down as cross and angry.