It was two in the afternoon ere the first boat was beached,and the long procession of chests and crates and sacks began to straggle through the sandy desert towards Equator Town.The grove of pandanus was practically a thing of the past.Fire surrounded and smoke rose in the green underbush.In a wide circuit the axes were still crashing.Those very advantages for which the place was chosen,it had been the king's first idea to abolish;and in the midst of this devastation there stood already a good-sized maniap'and a small closed house.A mat was spread near by for Tembinok';here he sat superintending,in cardinal red,a pith helmet on his head,a meerschaum pipe in his mouth,a wife stretched at his back with custody of the matches and tobacco.Twenty or thirty feet in front of him the bulk of the workers squatted on the ground;some of the bush here survived and in this the commons sat nearly to their shoulders,and presented only an arc of brown faces,black heads,and attentive eyes fixed on his majesty.Long pauses reigned,during which the subjects stared and the king smoked.
Then Tembinok'would raise his voice and speak shrilly and briefly.
There was never a response in words;but if the speech were jesting,there came by way of answer discreet,obsequious laughter -such laughter as we hear in schoolrooms;and if it were practical,the sudden uprising and departure of the squad.Twice they so disappeared,and returned with further elements of the city:a second house and a second maniap'.It was singular to spy,far off through the coco stems,the silent oncoming of the maniap',at first (it seemed)swimming spontaneously in the air -but on a nearer view betraying under the eaves many score of moving naked legs.In all the affair servile obedience was no less remarkable than servile deliberation.The gang had here mustered by the note of a deadly weapon;the man who looked on was the unquestioned master of their lives;and except for civility,they bestirred themselves like so many American hotel clerks.The spectator was aware of an unobtrusive yet invincible inertia,at which the skipper of a trading dandy might have torn his hair.