When We Got Near Enough To It To See Details, A Large Village Showed Among The Trees On Its Summit,

And a steep dwarf cliff, overgrown with trees and creeping plants came down to a small beach covered with large

Water-washed gray stones. There was evidently some kind of a row going on in that village, that took a lot of shouting too. We made straight for the beach, and drove our canoe among its outlying rocks, and then each of my men stowed his paddle quickly, slung on his ammunition bag, and picked up his ready loaded gun, sliding the skin sheath off the lock. Pagan got out on to the stones alongside the canoe just as the inhabitants became aware of our arrival, and, abandoning what I hope was a mass meeting to remonstrate with the local authorities on the insanitary state of the town, came - a brown mass of naked humanity - down the steep cliff path to attend to us, whom they evidently regarded as an Imperial interest. Things did not look restful, nor these Fans personally pleasant. Every man among them - no women showed - was armed with a gun, and they loosened their shovel-shaped knives in their sheaths as they came, evidently regarding a fight quite as imminent as we did. They drew up about twenty paces from us in silence. Pagan and Gray Shirt, who had joined him, held out their unembarrassed hands, and shouted out the name of the Fan man they had said they were friendly with:

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