He waited quietly to receive us, not having indeed the slightest idea of what was the object of my unexpected visit; when however he heard what I wanted he abused his wives in most unmeasured terms, and assured me that he would thrash them soundly, but as to giving them up prisoners, or his son either, that he declared he would not do; and then very openly and fairly challenged any one of the other natives, or all of them together, to take him up, assuring them that he would spear the first man through the heart that attempted to lay a finger on him.  I interfered so far in this dispute as to announce to Peerat that I considered my own person as sacred, and I then cocked both barrels of my double-barrelled gun and concluded by assuring him I should shoot him if he resisted me.

All native altercations are vociferous and noisy in the extreme, and are usually accompanied with a great deal of running and leaping about and quivering of spears; these circumstances I now took advantage of, and, whilst the others threatened to spear one another in all imaginable places, I wended my solitary way towards Peerat’s fire, where I discovered Master Dalbean, but could see nothing whatever of the ladies, who, I presume, were absent digging roots.

HIS PLEADINGS FOR HIS SON.

The young native was seized hold of before he could attempt to escape, and, as I told him if he now moved I should shoot him, he accompanied me very quietly; the others meanwhile capering about and abusing one another in the distance.  Peerat however soon found out what had taken place and came running after me.  These natives are always ardently attached to their children, and this the boy’s father now evinced in the strongest manner:  he first of all declared that the boy had been asleep with him, and that it was the mother only who had stolen; and he produced about a dozen witnesses who all asserted that this was the case.  I however refuted this evidence by mentioning the fact of his footmarks being in the garden.  They then urged that Peerat’s second wife had also been engaged in the theft, and that she was just the size of the boy; this however again was over-ruled from the fact of her footmarks having been also seen there.

PEERAT’S SON SECURED.

The father now urged upon me the youth of the boy, and that he was under the influence of the mother, and then fairly wept upon his child’s neck, who begged his father, and all the other natives by name, to save him.  I was now holding him by the wrist, for the feeling of the public began at this affecting exhibition to turn against me, even my own natives urging me to let the little fellow go; had I followed the dictates of my own heart I should have done so, but I knew that by being in this instance very determined I should effect eventually much good.  I therefore held fast by my prisoner.  I now saw some of the other natives giving Peerat spears, which is always a sign that they espouse a man’s quarrel