" At last, in despair,
and largely humiliated at the way in which savage womanhood had worsted
civilised, Maggie and I betook ourselves to the long tables where the
feast was being spread, and waited the arrival of the leader of the
other sex, whose success, evidenced by sounds coming from afar, made me
seriously doubt my right to be called his "better half."
After a final appeal to my hard-hearted lord and master to be spared the
indignity of the wash-tub, the native men had bowed to the inevitable.
Each man heroically lent himself to the task, and diligently helped his
neighbours to reach the required standard of excellence.
Finally all save one stubborn aboriginal protestant emerged from the
tub, like the immortal Tom Sawyer, "a man and a brother."
Well, the feast was a great success. The corned and tinned meat,
oranges, tomatoes, cakes and gingerbeer provided were largely consumed.
The eatables, indeed, met the approval of the savages, for, like Oliver
Twist, they asked for "more," until we who served them got rather
leg-weary, and began to doubt whether, when night came, we would be able
to say with any heartiness we had had "a merry Christmas."
Clad in their clean shirts, and with faces shining with soap-polish, the
men looked rather well, despite their repulsive and generally villainous
features. But the women, wrinkled, filthy, quarrelsome and disgusting,
they might have stood for incarnations of the witch-hags in _Macbeth_;
and as we watched them guzzling down the food, and then turning their
upper garments into impromptu bags to carry off what remained, it is
hard to say whether the feeling of pity or disgust they raised was the
stronger.
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