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"Ugh, he's too dirty. I'd rather give him a bath. Here, you, Adamu Adam, give this devil-devil a wash. Soap and water! Fill that wash-tub. Ornfiri, run and fetch 'm scrub-brush." The Tahitians, back from their fishing and grinning at the bedlam of the compound, entered into the joke. "Tambo!
Black Jimmie shifted away from the hut at once with the rest of his family for the "devil-devil" sat down there and Mary's name was strictly "tabooed" in accordance with aboriginal etiquette.
Erroneous had been his next conclusion, namely, that the source or cause could not be more distant than an hour's walk, and that he would easily be back by mid-afternoon to be picked up by the Nari's whale-boat. "That big fella noise no good, all the same devil-devil," Sagawa had adjudged. And Sagawa had been right. Had he not had his head hacked off within the day? Bassett shuddered.
"But they should be taught not to take white men's heads," Sheldon argued. She nodded approval, and said, "If we find one head we'll burn the village. Hey, you, Charley! What fella place head he stop?" "S'pose he stop along devil-devil house," was the answer. "That big fella house, he devil-devil."
In her place I took a small mongrel which belonged to the Warden, an "Italian greyhound," as some one suggested, though I never saw a like breed! He rejoiced in the name of "Devil-devil," because, I suppose, he was quite black. I made no attempt to replace poor Charlie Stansmore, since there were no men willing to come whom I should have cared to take.
They decorate the canoe-houses and devil-devil houses with them. Each village runs a jack-pot, and everybody antes. Whoever brings in a white man's head takes the pot. If there aren't openers for a long time, the pot grows to tremendous proportions. Beastly funny, isn't it? "I know. Didn't a Holland mate die on me of blackwater? And didn't I win a pot myself? It was this way.
Once, at a sharp turn where a man's shoulder would unavoidably brush against a screen of leaves, the bushman displayed great caution as he spread the leaves aside and exposed the head of a sharp-pointed spear, so set that the casual passer-by would receive at the least a nasty scratch. "My word," said Binu Charley, "that fella spear allee same devil-devil."
But the devil-devil came and sat down by King Jimmie's side one night, so he, too, moved out across the Old Man border, and the mia-mia rotted into the ground and the grass grew there. I admired Joe; I thought him wiser and cleverer than any white boy in the world.
The nights, by election, Bassett spent on the ashen floor of the devil-devil house, beneath the ever- swinging, slow-curing heads. His reason for this was that it was taboo to the lesser sex of woman, and therefore, a refuge for him from Balatta, who grew more persecutingly and perilously loverly as the Southern Cross rode higher in the sky and marked the imminence of her nuptials.
Also at times was he called The Loud Shouter, The God- Voiced, The Bird-Throated, The One with the Throat Sweet as the Throat of the Honey-Bird, The Sun Singer, and The Star-Born. Why The Star-Born? In vain Bassett interrogated Ngurn. According to that old devil-devil doctor, the Red One had always been, just where he was at present, for ever singing and thundering his will over men.
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