They laughed, and made him understand that it was of no value to them; but they passed it from hand to hand, and he noticed that they began to look at him curiously.  From its blackened appearance they conjectured whence he had obtained it; one, too, pointed to his shoes, which were still blackened, and appeared to have been scorched.  The whole camp now pressed on him, their wonder and interest rising to a great height.  With some trouble Felix described his journey over the site of the ancient city, interrupted with constant exclamations, questions, and excited conversation.  He told them everything, except about the diamond.

Their manner towards him perceptibly altered.  From the first they had been hospitable; they now became respectful, and even reverent.  The elders and their chief, not to be distinguished by dress or ornament from the rest, treated him with ceremony and marked deference.  The children were brought to see and even to touch him.  So great was their amazement that any one should have escaped from these pestilential vapours, that they attributed it to divine interposition, and looked upon him with some of the awe of superstition.  He was asked to stay with them altogether, and to take command of the tribe.

The latter Felix declined; to stay with them for awhile, at least, he was, of course, willing enough.  He mentioned his hidden possessions, and got up to return for them, but they would not permit him.  Two men started at once.  He gave them the bearings of the spot, and they had not the least doubt but that they should find it, especially as, the wind being still, the canoe would not yet have broken up, and would guide them.  The tribe remained in the green coombe the whole day, resting from their long journey.  They wearied Felix with questions, still he answered them as copiously as he could; he felt too grateful for their kindness not to satisfy them.  His bow was handled, his arrows carried about so that the quiver for the time was empty, and the arrows scattered in twenty hands.  He astonished them by exhibiting his skill with the weapon, striking a tree with an arrow at nearly three hundred yards.

Though familiar, of course, with the bow, they had never seen shooting like that, nor, indeed, any archery except at short quarters.  They had no other arms themselves but spears and knives.  Seeing one of the women cutting the boughs from a fallen tree, dead and dry, and, therefore, preferable for fuel, Felix naturally went to help her, and, taking the axe, soon made a bundle, which he carried for her.  It was his duty as a noble to see than no woman, not a slave, laboured; he had been bred in that idea, and would have felt disgraced had he permitted it.  The women looked on with astonishment, for in these rude tribes the labour of the women was considered valuable and appraised like that of a horse.

Without any conscious design, Felix thus in one day conciliated and won the regard of the two most powerful parties in the camp, the chief and the women.  By his refusing the command the chief was flattered, and his possible hostility prevented.  The act of cutting the wood and carrying the bundle gave him the hearts of the women.  They did not, indeed, think their labour in any degree oppressive; still, to be relieved of it was pleasing.