side for a few minutes to attend to some detail affecting the seven-o’clock dinner. She was a passed mistress in housekeeping. I had tasted her puddings and bread with beatitude.
When all had gone, I turned casually and saw a basket made of plaited green withes hanging by a nail outside the door-jamb. With a rush that made my hot temples throb there came vividly to my mind recollections of the head-hunters—those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed presence. . . . From time to time, as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy or ambition may move him, one creeps forth with his snickersnee and takes up the silent trail. . . . Back he comes, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory head of his victim . . . His particular brown or white maid lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger’s eyes at the evidence of his love for her.
I stole softly from the house and returned to my hut. From its supporting nails in the wall I took a machete as heavy as a butcher’s cleaver and sharper than a safety-razor. And then I chuckled softly to myself, and set out to the fastidiously appointed private office of
