Well, we brings this great idol on board, and the captain has it dried and stood on deck; but I'm blest if the black chaps didn't all turn huffy about it, and kicked up a shine, and then took and went off, leaving all their work. They came back, though, next morning reg'lar as could be, and I says to Bob Davis, "Bob," I says, "that's just for all the world like coves at home: cuts off in a passion, and then comes back when they're cool again." "Ah," says Bob, with a bit of a chuckle; "p'raps it is, but not quite; for they was afraid to work with one o' their gods a-looking at 'em." "Then what made 'em come back now?" I say. "Because he's gone again bobbing about among the Dicky Todds and corpuses; and it's my belief," he says, "that our watch didn't keep much of a look-out, or they'd have seen some of the swarthy beggars come aboard and heave it overboard, for it's gone sure enough." Gone it was, and no mistake; and I suppose Bob must have been right; and, though the cap went on a good 'un about losing his curiosity, it warn't no good at all. "Some of you knows something of it," says the cap to old Jam, as we called him for short. "Captain Sahib no got god of his own at home that he want black fellow's," says old Jam very grandly, but making a great salaam a'most down to the deck. But the cap only grumbled out something, and went off, for he didn't want to offend the men. One day we had a sad upset--one as gave our chaps the horrors, and made them restless to get out of the place, and worse, for after that the men were always looking out for the crocodiles, and bodies, and things that came down the great stream, while now everything they saw floating, if it was only a lump of rotten rushes or a bit of tree-trunk, got to be called something horrid. Then the chaps got tired of its being so hot, and discontented at having not enough to do, I s'pose, for a ship's crew never seems so happy as when the men are full swing an' at the work. Well, it so happened that in two places the cap had had little swing stages slung over the side for the men who were touching up the ship's ribs with a new streak of paint; and there the chaps were dabbing away very coolly as to the way they worked, but very hotly as to the weather, for the sun comes down there a scorcher when there's no breeze on. I was very busy myself trying to find a cool place somewhere; and not getting it, when the man over the bulwarks gives a hail, and I goes to see what he wanted, which it was more paint, because he didn't want to come up the side, and get it himself. So I takes the pot from him, and gets it half filled with colour, and goes back to the side all on the dawdle-and-crawl system just like the other chaps on deck. "Now then," I says, "lay hold;" but my gentleman didn't move, for there he was, squatted down and smoking his pipe; when, finding it comforting, he wouldn't move.