The younger folk seem to practise rude jokes very like those carried out by our own youngsters. Here is an instance. A young African negro, seeing an old woman carrying a pumpkin, approached her and shouted that there was something on her head. She forgot all about the pumpkin, shrieked at the thought of some hideous object on her head, and ran forward, allowing her tormentor laughingly to pick up the prize she had let fall.[167] As is natural, these practical jocosities are sometimes directed, with a certain caution, of course, against the European. A young savage of Tasmania once slyly removed a bag of shell-fish laid down by a sailor at the foot of a rock, and let him search for it in vain, and, when tired of his joke, replaced the bag, showing himself “highly diverted” at the trick he had played the European.[168] As with ourselves, these practical jokes are wont to be paid back, and with “interest”. A story is told of certain Hottentots who played off a joke on some sleeping companions by shooting a couple of arrows close to them, which made them start up and hurry for arms to their waggons, where they were received with a shout of laughter. The victims of this false alarm afterwards paid out the perpetrators. They succeeded in terrifying them by a skilful imitation of the roar of a lion, which drove them into camp screaming with terror.[169] In other cases the {231} practical joke may be retaliative of some serious annoyance, and may even be inflicted on some European “superior”. Miss Kingsley relates how some of her West African “ladies” had been piqued by the employee of a trading company, who tried to get them apart, when planting manioc, so as to hinder them from talking. They took their playful revenge by making a haycock over their tyrant and shouting: “Get along, white man! I ’spectable married woman,” and so forth. She gives another instance of this disposition to playful punishment in her ladies. A young black official had been rude to some of them, whereupon they resorted to the broader joke of throwing him into “the batter that passes for ‘water’”.[170] Closely connected with these modes of teasing, we have the practice of taking off bodily defects by mimicry and by nicknames. These modes of playful attack appear to be directed most commonly against outsiders, but instances are given of a discreet mimicry of a fellow-tribesman in his absence. It seems probable, though I have not found the fact brought out explicitly, that much of the amusement derived by these simple folk from their nightly talks, which are made gay with laughter, consists in teasing attacks on the bodily defects or peculiarities of certain members; though, from the evidence forthcoming, one would infer that a choral laughter over the stranger is the more usual feature in these social entertainments.