The Sorcerer's Stone

Excerpt: It was dark in the marea, yet not so dark but that the Marquis and I could see about us. We had been inside this New Guinea temple, or club-house, or Parliament building?you might call it a little of all three, and not go very far wrong?for over half an hour, and our eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom There were thirty or forty men in it, squatting about the floor, or lying on the bamboo shelves they used as beds. In the brown dusk of the unwindowed building, they seemed to melt into their surroundings like ghosts, for they were brown too, and wore no clothes save a bark loin-cloth. You could see the whites of their eyes, and their bead necklaces, and the halos of colored feathers they wore in their hair?little more. They were smoking, chewing betel-nut, and spitting its blood-red juice out on the floor?grunting, scratching, staring at us. They had heads like a soldier?s fur busby; their bodies were small, according to white men?s standards, but they were notably well-made and muscled, and evenly developed. Most of them had wooden spears and tall war-bows lying on the ground within reach; and the walls of the marea were covered with clubs, shields, spears and bunches of barbed arrows The scene was old to me?old to weariness. I had been in these temples, or others like them, more times than I could count, recruiting boys for some island trip, trading, getting food. It was true that I had never been in this especial district of New Guinea, but I did not see much difference between the savages I knew and the savages I didn?t know. And anyhow, I had long since lost interest in them, save as a means of making money.