LOST ISLAND
ing Tempest and Dave, paid a visit to the bungalow and took coffee there. One of the crew fetched an accordion from the ship, and for the first time in history a concert was held on the island, before a rapturous audience of fifty or sixty niggers who crowded around the bungalow.
"It's the accordion they 're listening to," the trader explained. "The beggars thought the harmonium was a sort of magic when I first got it, and I had no end of a game with 'em, but familiarity breeds contempt. I remember the time when they used to bring any one who was sick, an' let 'em listen to the strains of a vaudeville ditty that Sydney and New York had forgotten, and 'pon my word the patient used to get well again straight away. They 're funny creatures, natives. They 've only got to make up their minds that they 're going to die and even 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay' on the old wheeze bag won't save 'em."
In some places the natives displayed a keenness
188
