I was very much in earnest, and I waited with nervous trepidation to see the effect of my peroration.

Under the circumstances, you may judge of my astonishment when not only the chiefs, but the whole "nation" assembled, suddenly burst into roars of eerie laughter.
Then came Yamba to the rescue.

Ah! noble and devoted creature! The bare mention of her name stirs every fibre of my being with love and wonder.
Greater love than hers no creature ever knew, and not once but a thousand times did she save my wretched life at the risk of her own.
Well, Yamba, I say, came up and whispered to me.

She had been studying my face quietly and eagerly, and had gradually come to see what was passing in my mind.

She whispered that the chiefs, far from desiring me to kill the girl for a cannibal feast, were _offering her to me as a wife_, and that I was merely expected to tap her on the head with the stick, in token of her subjection to her new spouse! In short, this blow on the head was the legal marriage ceremony _tout simple_.