The Lodges Were All Dark And Silent, And The Dogs, Mild
Like Their Masters, Took No Notice Of Me.
The only sound was the
rustle of a light breeze through the surrounding forest.
The verse
came into my mind, "It is not the will of your Father which is in
heaven that one of these little ones should perish." Surely these
simple savages are children, as children to be judged; may we not
hope as children to be saved through Him who came "not to judge the
world, but to save the world"?
I crept back again and into my mosquito net, and suffered not from
fleas or mosquitoes, but from severe cold. Shinondi conversed with
Ito for some time in a low musical voice, having previously asked
if it would keep me from sleeping. No Japanese ever intermitted
his ceaseless chatter at any hour of the night for a similar
reason. Later, the chief's principal wife, Noma, stuck a triply-
cleft stick in the fire-hole, put a potsherd with a wick and some
fish-oil upon it, and by the dim light of this rude lamp sewed
until midnight at a garment of bark cloth which she was ornamenting
for her lord with strips of blue cloth, and when I opened my eyes
the next morning she was at the window sewing by the earliest
daylight. She is the most intelligent-looking of all the women,
but looks sad and almost stern, and speaks seldom. Although she is
the principal wife of the chief she is not happy, for she is
childless, and I thought that her sad look darkened into something
evil as the other wife caressed a fine baby boy.
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