It lay very low in the water, and as the amazed onlookers saw it gliding across the placid waters of the lagoon enveloped in smoke and flames, they did actually believe that I had set fire to the water itself--particularly when the blazing oil was seen in lurid patches on the placid surface.

They remained watching till the fire died down, when they retired to their own homes, more convinced than ever that the white man among them was indeed a great and powerful spirit.
But, human nature being fundamentally the same all the world over, it was natural enough--and, indeed, the wonder is how I escaped so long--that one or other of the tribal medicine-men should get jealous of my power and seek to overthrow me.

Now, the medicine-man belonging to the tribe in my mountain home presently found himself (or fancied himself) under a cloud,--the reason, of course, being that my display of wonders far transcended anything which he himself could do.

So my rival commenced an insidious campaign against me, trying to explain away every wonderful thing that I did, and assuring the blacks that if I were a spirit at all it was certainly a spirit of evil.

He never once lost an opportunity of throwing discredit and ridicule upon me and my powers; and at length I discerned symptoms in the tribe which rendered it imperatively necessary that I should take immediate and drastic steps to overthrow my enemy, who, by the way, had commenced trying to duplicate every one of my tricks or feats.