Instead of lying down when the others did, I remained seated, my guardian also sitting--no doubt waiting for me to lie down first.

Presently I moved nearer to him and began a conversation in a low voice, anxious not to rouse the attention of the other men.
"Once you said that Oalava would be given to me for a wife," I began.
"Some day I shall want a wife." He nodded approval, and remarked sententiously that the desire to possess a wife was common to all men.
"What has been left to me ?" I said despondingly and spreading out my hands.

"My pistol gone, and did I not give Runi the tinder-box, and the little box with a cock painted on it to you?
I had no return--not even the blow-pipe.

How, then, can I get me a wife ?" He, like the others--dull-witted savage that he was--had come to the belief that I was incapable of the cunning and duplicity they practiced.
I could not see a green parrot sitting silent and motionless amidst the green foliage as they could; I had not their preternatural keenness of sight; and, in like manner, to deceive with lies and false seeming was their faculty and not mine.

He fell readily into the trap.