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'And what is Devil-work? I inquired. 'If you like, I'll show you some when we get to Johnnie's, he replied. 'Johnnie's' was a quaint little house upon the crest of the beach, raised some three feet on posts, approached by stairs; part walled, part trellised. Trophies of advertisement- photographs were hung up within for decoration. There was a table and a recess-bed, in which Mrs.
It was wizardry, sheer wizardry; "devil-work," the natives used to call it. Triplett, blindfolded, could find the inlet to a hermetically sealed atoll. When there wasn't any inlet he would wait for a seventh wave which is always extra large and take her over on the crest, disregarding the ragged coral below. The Kawa was a tight little craft, built for rough work.
"Meant to heave it overboard before now," growled the other. Someone handed it down to Darrow. "If I had something to hold enough water," muttered he, "I'd like to float it. I'd like to see for myself how it worked out. I'd like to see that devil-work in action." He spoke feverishly. "Boy, fill the portable rubber tub in Mr. Forsythe's cabin and bring it here," ordered the captain.
My wife and I lodged with a Chinaman some half a mile away; and thither Captain Reid and a native boy escorted us by torch-light. On the way the torch went out, and we took shelter in a small and lonely Christian chapel to rekindle it. Stuck in the rafters of the chapel was a branch of knotted palm. 'What is that? I asked. 'O, that's Devil-work, said the Captain.
Yellow or not yellow, it was all one to him. The mate murmured to himself. "No. He can't know. No! No more than a baby. It would take an older head." "I don't even understand what you mean," observed Mr Powell coldly. "And even the best head would be puzzled by such devil-work," the mate continued, muttering.
Bingham lived and laboured and has left golden memories; whence all the education in the northern Gilberts traces its descent; and where we were boarded by little native Sunday- school misses in clean frocks, with demure faces, and singing hymns as to the manner born. Our experience of Devil-work at Apaiang had been as follows: It chanced we were benighted at the house of Captain Tierney.
Stevenson saw a clear space, a fine mat spread in the midst, and on the mat a wreath of white flowers and one of the devil-work boxes. A woman whom we guess to have been Mrs. Terutak' sat in front, now drooping over the box like a mother over a cradle, now lifting her face and directing her song to heaven. A passing toddy-cutter told my wife that she was praying.
I had an array of facts, too, and I went at that board like a revivalist, telling 'em just the kind of devil-work the 'men's specialists' did. At the finish I sat down feeling pretty good. Nobody said anything for quite a while. Then the chairman dropped the pencil he'd been puttering with, and said, in a kind of purry voice: 'Gentlemen: I thought Mr.
He made devil-work every day, he told us, to know if ships were coming in; and thereafter brought us regular reports of the results. It was surprising how regularly he was wrong; but he always had an explanation ready. There had been some schooner in the offing out of view; but either she was not bound for Apemama, or had changed her course, or lay becalmed.
The whole had the appearance of a mid-summer and sylvan Christmas-tree al fresco. Yet we were already well enough acquainted in the Gilberts to recognise it, at the first sight, for a piece of wizardry, or, as they say in the group, of Devil-work. The plaited palms were what we recognised. We had seen them before on Apaiang, the most christianised of all these islands; where excellent Mr.
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