Rídan The Devil And Other Stories. Becke Louis

and should feel pleased if I would look at his samples.

      He was such a wretched, hungry-looking, down-upon-his-beam-ends old fellow, that I could not refuse to inspect his wares. And then his boots filled me with pity. For such a little man he had the biggest boots I ever saw—baggy, elastic sides, and toes turned up, with the after part of the uppers sticking out some inches beyond the frayed edges of his trousers. As he sat down and drew these garments up, and his bare, skinny legs showed above his wrecked boots, his feet looked like two water-logged cutters under bare poles, with the water running out of the scuppers.

      Mary brought the whisky. I poured him out a good, stiff second mate’s nip. It did my heart good to see him drink it, and hear the soft ecstatic ‘Ah, ah, ah,’ which broke from him when he put the glass down; it was a Te Deum Laudamus.

      Having briefly intimated to him that I had no intention of buying ‘a handsome granite monument, with suitable inscription, or twelve lines of verse, for £4, 17s. 6d.,’ I took up his packet of In Memoriam cards and went through them. The first one was a hand-drawn design in cream and gold—Kate’s fancy. It represented in the centre an enormously bloated infant with an idiotic leer, lying upon its back on a blue cloud with scalloped edges, whilst two male angels, each with an extremely vicious expression, were pulling the cloud along by means of tow-lines attached to their wings. Underneath were these words in MS.: ‘More angels can be added, if desired, at an extra charge of 6d. each.’

      No. 2 represented a disorderly flight of cherubims, savagely attacking a sleeping infant in its cradle, which was supported on either hand by two vulgar-looking female angels blowing bullock horns in an apathetic manner.

      No. 3 rather took my fancy—there was so much in it—four large fowls flying across the empyrean; each bird carried a rose as large as a cabbage in its beak, and apparently intended to let them drop upon a group of family mourners beneath. The MS. inscribed said, ‘If photographs are supplied of members of the Mourning Family, our artist will reproduce same in group gathered round the deceased. If doves are not approved, cherubims, angels, or floral designs may be used instead, for small extra charge.’

      1

      Whip.

      2

      The Samoans apply the term ‘Tâfito’ to all natives of the Gilbert Group and other equatorial islands. The word is an abbreviation of Taputeauea (Drummond’s Island), and ‘Tâfito’ is synonymous for ‘savage’—in some senses.

      3

      Polynesian labourers are generally termed ‘boys.’

      4

      The native dog of Australia, whose long, accentuated howl is most distressing to hear.

      5

      English whale-ship boats generally used two line tub’s— American only one. No doubt this boat was lost from an English whaler, the Britannia, then on the coast.

      6

      Publisher’s Note.—The strange but true story of the Bryants is told in a volume entitled A First Fleet Family. (Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery.    London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1896.)

      7

      Narrative of a Whaling Voyage round the Globe, from 1833 to 1836. By F. D. Bennett.