"
"Have you seen them, then, sir? Are you a voyager?" asked Tom Poope
eagerly, his face brightening. "And will you look on and tell us if we
do it right?"
Barlowe grinned good-humoredly, and Armadas waved a laughing assent.
They seated themselves upon a grassy bank and the play began.
Before half a dozen speeches had been said it was quite clear that the
dark-eyed child who played the Indian King was the heart and fire of the
piece. They were all clever children and well trained, but he alone
lived his part. His small figure moved with a grace and dignity that
even his grotesque apparel could not spoil. The costumer had evidently
built his design for the costume of an Indian chief upon legends of wild
men drawn from the history of Hanno and his gorillas, adding whatever
absurdities he had gathered from sailors of the Gold Coast and the
Caribbean Sea. Armadas, who had made a voyage to Newfoundland and seen
the stately figure of a sachem outlined against a sunset sky, thought
that the boy's instinct was truer than the costumer's tradition.
"Let me arrange thy habit, lad," he said when the first scene ended and
the clown began his dance. With a few deft touches, ripping down one
side of the tunic and wreathing a girdle of ivy and bracken, he changed
the whole outline of the figure.
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