 from between the upright canes which composed its sides. Farther
on, you were fired upon by a detachment of sharpshooters, mounted upon the top
of a pi-pi.
    Pop, pop, pop, pop! green guavas, seeds, and berries were flying about in
every direction, and during this dangerous state of affairs, I was half afraid
that, like the man and his brazen bull, I should fall a victim to my own
ingenuity. Like everything else, however, the excitement gradually wore away,
though ever after occasional pop-guns might be heard at all hours of the day.
    It was toward the close of the pop-gun war, that I was infinitely diverted
with a strange freak of Marheyo's.
    I had worn, when I quitted the ship, a pair of thick pumps, which, from the
rough usage they had received in scaling precipices and sliding down gorges,
were so dilapidated as to be altogether unfit for use - so, at least, would have
thought the generality of people, and so they most certainly were, when
considered in the light of shoes. But things unserviceable in one way, may with
advantage be applied in another - that is, if one have genius enough for the
purpose. This genius Marheyo possessed in a superlative degree, as he abundantly
evinced by the use to which he put these sorely bruised and battered old shoes.
    Every article, however trivial, which belonged to me, the natives appeared
to regard as sacred; and I observed that for several days after becoming an
inmate of the house, my pumps were suffered to remain, untouched, where I had
first happened to throw them. I remembered, however, that after a while I had
missed them from their accustomed place; but the matter gave me no concern,
supposing that Tinor, like any other tidy housewife, having come across them in
some of her domestic occupations, had pitched the useless things out of the
house. But I was soon undeceived.
    One day I observed old Marheyo bustling about me with unusual activity, and
to such a degree as almost to supersede Kory-Kory in the functions of his
office. One moment he volunteered to trot off with me on his back to the stream;
and when I refused, no ways daunted by the repulse, he continued to frisk about
me like a superannuated house-dog. I could not for the life of me conjecture
what possessed the old gentleman, until all at once, availing himself of the
temporary absence of the household, he went through a variety of uncouth
gestures, pointing eagerly down to
