A reader of the ARABIAN NIGHTS felt quite at home.Here was the suffumigation;here was the muttering wizard;here was the desert place to which Aladdin was decoyed by the false uncle.But they manage these things better in fiction.The effect was marred by the levity of the magician,entertaining his patient with small talk like an affable dentist,and by the incongruous presence of Mr.Osbourne with a camera.As for my cold,it was neither better nor worse.
I was now handed over to Terutak',the leading practitioner or medical baronet of Apemama.His place is on the lagoon side of the island,hard by the palace.A rail of light wood,some two feet high,encloses an oblong piece of gravel like the king's Pray Place;in the midst is a green tree;below,a stone table bears a pair of boxes covered with a fine mat;and in front of these an offering of food,a cocoa-nut,a piece of taro or a fish,is placed daily.On two sides the enclosure is lined with maniap's;and one of our party,who had been there to sketch,had remarked a daily concourse of people and an extraordinary number of sick children;for this is in fact the infirmary of Apemama.The doctor and myself entered the sacred place alone;the boxes and the mat were displaced;and I was enthroned in their stead upon the stone,facing once more to the east.For a while the sorcerer remained unseen behind me,making passes in the air with a branch of palm.
Then he struck lightly on the brim of my straw hat;and this blow he continued to repeat at intervals,sometimes brushing instead my arm and shoulder.I have had people try to mesmerise me a dozen times,and never with the least result.But at the first tap -on a quarter no more vital than my hat-brim,and from nothing more virtuous than a switch of palm wielded by a man I could not even see -sleep rushed upon me like an armed man.My sinews fainted,my eyes closed,my brain hummed,with drowsiness.I resisted,at first instinctively,then with a certain flurry of despair,in the end successfully;if that were indeed success which enabled me to scramble to my feet,to stumble home somnambulous,to cast myself at once upon my bed,and sink at once into a dreamless stupor.
When I awoke my cold was gone.So I leave a matter that I do not understand.
Meanwhile my appetite for curiosities (not usually very keen)had been strangely whetted by the sacred boxes.They were of pandanus wood,oblong in shape,with an effect of pillaring along the sides like straw work,lightly fringed with hair or fibre and standing on four legs.The outside was neat as a toy;the inside a mystery Iwas resolved to penetrate.But there was a lion in the path.Imight not approach Terutak',since I had promised to buy nothing in the island;I dared not have recourse to the king,for I had already received from him more gifts than I knew how to repay.In this dilemma (the schooner being at last returned)we hit on a device.Captain Reid came forward in my stead,professed an unbridled passion for the boxes,and asked and obtained leave to bargain for them with the wizard.That same afternoon the captain and I made haste to the infirmary,entered the enclosure,raised the mat,and had begun to examine the boxes at our leisure,when Terutak's wife bounced out of one of the nigh houses,fell upon us,swept up the treasures,and was gone.There was never a more absolute surprise.She came,she took,she vanished,we had not a guess whither;and we remained,with foolish looks and laughter on the empty field.Such was the fit prologue of our memorable bargaining.
Presently Terutak'came,bringing Tamaiti along with him,both smiling;and we four squatted without the rail.In the three maniap's of the infirmary a certain audience was gathered:the family of a sick child under treatment,the king's sister playing cards,a pretty girl,who swore I was the image of her father;in all perhaps a score.Terutak's wife had returned (even as she had vanished)unseen,and now sat,breathless and watchful,by her husband's side.Perhaps some rumour of our quest had gone abroad,or perhaps we had given the alert by our unseemly freedom:certain,at least,that in the faces of all present,expectation and alarm were mingled.
Captain Reid announced,without preface or disguise,that I was come to purchase;Terutak',with sudden gravity,refused to sell.
He was pressed;he persisted.It was explained we only wanted one:no matter,two were necessary for the healing of the sick.He was rallied,he was reasoned with:in vain.He sat there,serious and still,and refused.All this was only a preliminary skirmish;hitherto no sum of money had been mentioned;but now the captain brought his great guns to bear.He named a pound,then two,then three.Out of the maniap's one person after another came to join the group,some with mere excitement,others with consternation in their faces.The pretty girl crept to my side;it was then that -surely with the most artless flattery -she informed me of my likeness to her father.Tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging head and every mark of dejection.Terutak'streamed with sweat,his eye was glazed,his face wore a painful rictus,his chest heaved like that of one spent with running.The man must have been by nature covetous;and I doubt if ever I saw moral agony more tragically displayed.His wife by his side passionately encouraged his resistance.
And now came the charge of the old guard.The captain,making a skip,named the surprising figure of five pounds.At the word the maniap's were emptied.The king's sister flung down her cards and came to the front to listen,a cloud on her brow.The pretty girl beat her breast and cried with wearisome iteration that if the box were hers I should have it.Terutak's wife was beside herself with pious fear,her face discomposed,her voice (which scarce ceased from warning and encouragement)shrill as a whistle.Even Terutak'
lost that image-like immobility which he had hitherto maintained.
