"These folks lie low and sing little songs, and just as you're
dropping off there's a knife somewhere.--Have you heard anything about
the doings up yonder?" He indicated the mountain that rose, sharply cut
and chasmed, back of the town.
"Trouble with the natives? No."
"This is the time o' year when the heathen begin to feel their oats.
Miss Eva, she's interested in their superstitions. They don't usually
come to anything--just a little more work for the police if they get
drunk and run amuck. The constabulary is mostly off on the spree. They
have gods of wood and stone up in the caves yonder, you know. But it's
always a kind of uneasy feel to things till they settle down again."
I leaned against a coil of rope and pursued the subject. "But none of
the people you and I are interested in are concerned with native orgies.
We are all what you might call agnostics."
"Speak for yourself, sir. I'm a Methodist. 'Tain't that they mix
themselves up in the doings. But--well, you haven't lived through the
merry month of May on Naapu. I tell you, this blessed island ain't big
enough to hold all that froth without everybody feeling it. Just because
folks don't know what's going on up yonder it kind of relaxes 'em. I
don't say the Kanakas do anything they shouldn't, except get drunk, and
joy-ride down waterfalls, and keep up an infernal tom-toming.
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