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I stopped most of the time on the raised platform of one of the houses and shot the duck, which Acland and Monckton put up, as they flew over my head. I had a companion in old Giwi, the chief of the Kaili-kailis, many of whom were among our carriers. He seemed to be on very friendly terms with one of the Agai Ambu on whose hut I was.
At all events, old Giwi was too courteous to shake her off, though to me it was a most amusing sight, and it was all I could do to refrain from laughing aloud. We saw the dead body of a man half-wrapped in mats tied to poles in the middle of the lake. They always dispose of their dead thus, and I suppose leave them there till they rot or dry up.
As they pulled cheerfully at their oars they seemed in splendid spirits, for they felt almost sure that they were in for some fighting, and this they dearly love. Our boys, however, did not look quite so happy, especially my boy Arigita, who was a son of old Giwi, chief of the Kaili-kailis.
Possibly the woman was frightened of us, and seeing a stranger of her own colour in old Giwi, appealed to him for protection. The Baruga, however, had previously told us that the Agai Ambu had recently captured one of their women, and I have since thought that this might possibly have been the woman, and am sorry I did not make inquiries at the time.
He old Giwi had gone on the previous day with three or four large canoes laden with rice and manned by men of the Kaili-kaili and Arifamu tribes, and we intended taking more canoes and men from the Okeina tribe en route.
Presently a woman came over in a canoe from one of the houses in the far village, and climbed up on to the platform where we were. Directly she saw old Giwi, she caught hold of him and hugged and kissed him all over and rubbed her face against his body, covering him with the black pigment with which she had smeared her face.
The carriers had had nothing to eat since the day before, and poor old Giwi, the chief, squeezed his stomach to show how empty he was, but still managed to giggle in his usual childish fashion. They had travelled for five days along the coast, and had hardly eaten anything.
She was sobbing all the time and chanting a very mournful but not unmusical kind of song. This exhibition lasted over half an hour, and poor old Giwi looked quite bewildered, and gazed up at me in a most piteous way, as much as to say: "Awful nuisance, this woman but what am I to do?" He understood the meaning of this performance as little as I did.
We determined to resume our journey the next day, and go inland and attack their villages. We seemed likely to be in for a good fight, and the police especially were highly elated. Old Giwi, who bragged so much about his fighting capabilities at starting, shook his head and thought it a tall order, and that we were not strong enough to tackle them.
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