“What noise is that? Female voices outside. Who in the name of goodness are they, passing and repassing in the king’s harem--ever gabbling, gabbling, gabbling! This amusement going on during the whole livelong night with the companionship of the rats, musquitoes, and bull-frogs put a thousand strange notions into my head. Can they be going to the creek-side to sacrifice, perhaps infants? Are they on their way to undergo the process of laving in that sweet stream? If the former be their purpose, they must be out-Heroding Herod; if the latter, a Turkish bath with shampooing of curry comb would seem very appropriate for the majority of the ladies whom I saw to-day in the streets, and whose bodies were daubed over with a greasy cosmetic of red (styled in the Nimbe language Umbia), which gives the anointed the semblance of a highly tinged red Indian. But down they go and back they come, never tiring, never relenting, never showing compassion, till morning dawned, when I opened the door cautiously, and looked out. “Some were standing in the mud, others were lifting fish and nets out of canoes. They were the king’s fisherwomen. Following their professional pursuits during the night, they had kept me in this condition of restless curiosity. Talk of Billingsgate indeed! I looked at them and there they were, wet, muddy, and slimy, like so many ebony mermaids, but still prattling and talking, their tongues clattering as if these organs were so many untirable steam engines. “There was no use in giving them a bit of my mind, for I did not understand a word of their language, and they did not comprehend mine. It may be useless to record that I did not go down on my knees in the mud to pray for them. I was unheroic enough to imagine that a wiser thing than that, as far as my own comfort was concerned, would be to quit the Nimbe country as soon as I could: so my boys having got into the boat, I gave his sable majesty a more fervent than friendly shake of the hand, and turned my back on his territory with feelings in which I cannot say there were any sentiments of regret.”