"Chuck him out into the backyard," said Hugh. That evening the poor old image, as disgusted as a piece of rock could possibly be, was carried to the river and tossed into the rapids, his successors standing with the multitude on the high bank to witness his disappearance and to hear his unhappy kerplunk! The waters closed over his unhallowed head and the new dispensation began. Back across the little plain to the torch-lit village swarmed the fickle, joyous savages. "Good Lord," observed Hugh, "what a ferocious crowd it is! They tear their enemies to pieces and yet we have them under our thumbs--for the present at least." "I believe they are naturally intelligent, and I'm sure we can help them. Do you know what those white robes are made from?" "Certainly. Cotton." "It is woven grass. They bleach it. The women do the work down by the river, and the robes worn by their spearmen are really beautiful pieces of fabric." "I am going to leave my measure for a pair of white grass trousers," said Hugh lightly, "and an umbrella," he added, looking up at the broiling sky. Together the white usurpers planned many important improvements against the probability of a long stay among the savages. A wonderful system of sewerage was designed--and afterward carried out faithfully. A huge bath pool was to be sunk for Lady Tennys in the rear of her apartment; a kitchen and cold-storage cellar were to grow off the west end of the temple and a splendid awning was to be ordered for the front porch! Time and patience were to give them all of these changes. Time was of less consequence than patience, it may be well to add. The slaving retinue was willing but ignorant. The adoring chief gave Tennys a group of ten handmaidens before the day was over, and Hugh had a constant body guard of twenty stalwarts--which he prosaically turned into carpenters, stone-masons, errand boys and hunters. "You must not try to civilize them in a day," she smilingly protested when he became particularly enthusiastic. "Well, just see what we have done to-day," he cried. "How can you account for the enforced abdication of old Uncle Rocksy, the transformation of his palace into a commodious, three-room lodging-house, and all such things, unless you admit that we are here to do as we please? We'll make a metropolitan place out of this hamlet in a year if we--" "A year! Oh, don't suggest such a possibility," she cried. "I'd die if I thought we were to be here for a year." "I hope we won't, but we may as well look the situation straight in the face. There has been no white man here before us. It is by the rarest chance in the world that we are here. Therefore, it may be years before we are found and taken away from this undiscovered paradise." The flickering, fitful light of the torches stuck in the ground behind them played upon two white faces from which had fled the zeal and fervor of the moment before, leaving then drawn and dispirited. "All our lives, perhaps," she murmured.