"He was on guard by the tree and he looked
at me angrily."
"Ah," the Shadow remarked, with a sigh of regret, "he keeps watch well.
It will be hard work to assail him. No god in Boupari ever held his place
so tight. Who wishes to take Tu-Kila-Kila's divinity must get up early."
They went on in silence to the little volcanic knoll near the centre of
the island. There, in the neat garden plot they had observed before, a
man, in the last relics of a very tattered European costume, much covered
with a short cape of native cloth, was tending his flowers and singing to
himself merrily. His back was turned to them as they came up. Felix
paused a moment, unseen, and caught the words the stranger was singing:
"Tres jolie,
Peu polie,
Possedant un gros magot;
Fort en gueule,
Pas begueule;
Telle etait--"
The stranger looked up, and paused in the midst of his lines,
open-mouthed. For a moment he stood and stared astonished. Then, raising
his native cap with a graceful air, and bowing low, as he would have
bowed to a lady on the Boulevard, he advanced to greet a brother European
with the familiar words, in good educated French, "Monsieur, I salute
you!"
To Felix, the sound of a civilized voice in the midst of so much strange
and primitive barbarism, was like a sudden return to some forgotten
world, so deeply and profoundly did it move and impress him.
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