and would have none of her, or her dish.

* * * * *

About a mile up to the west of the palace is a very old ruin in the
deepest forest, I think of a mosque, though only three truncated
internal pillars under ivy, and the weedy floor, with the courtyard and
portal-steps remain, before it being a long avenue of cedars, gently
descending from the steps, the path between the trees choked with
long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. Here I saw one day a
large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may have been
either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings
graven round it, from centre to circumference. The next day I brought
some nails, a hammer, a saw, and a box of paints from the _Speranza_;
and I painted the rings in different colours, cut down a slim
lime-trunk, nailed the thin disc along its top, and planted it well,
before the steps: for I said I would make a bull's-eye, and do rifle and
revolver practice before it, from the avenue. And this the next evening
I was doing at four hundred feet, startling the island, it seemed, with
that unusual noise, when up she came peering with enquiring face: at
which I was very angry, because my arm, long unused, was firing wide:
but I was too proud to say anything, and let her look, and soon she
understood, laughing every time I made a considerable miss, till at last
I turned upon her saying: 'If you think it so easy, you may try.'

She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and
after I had opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how
to shoot, I put into her hands one of the _Speranza_ Colt's. She took
her bottom-lip between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the
revolver like an old shot to the level of her intense right eye, and