I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed mycomprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, andbeing completely nonplussed and confounded aboutthe stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid ofhim as if it was the devil himself who had thusbroken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, Iwas so afraid of him that I was not game enough justthen to address him, and demand a satisfactoryanswer concerning what seemed inexplicable inhim.

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. AsI live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back,too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, andjust escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if aparcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plainthat he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the SouthSeas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too—perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens! look at thattomahawk!

But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something thatcompletely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen.Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on achair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image witha hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days' old Congo baby. Remembering theembalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved insome similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deallike polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed itproved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the paperedfire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. Thechimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place madea very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol.

I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime—to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of hisgrego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on topand applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze.Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers(whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out thebiscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the littlenegro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all.