They had just been eating their supper of deer's flesh, roasted on
the coals, and after a time one of the savages, as an experiment,
took up a bone of meat and offered it to him. Being very hungry he
gladly took it, and began gnawing the meat off the bone.

When he had satisfied his hunger, he began to look round him, still
stared at by the others. Then one of the women, who had a
good-humoured face, caught him up, and seating him on her knees,
tried to talk to him.

"Melu-melumia quiltahou papa shani cha silmata," she spoke, gazing
very earnestly into his face.

They had all been talking among themselves while he was eating; but
he did not know that savages had a language of their own different
from ours, and so thought that they had only been amusing themselves
with a kind of nonsense talk, which meant nothing. Now when the
woman addressed this funny kind of talk to him, he answered her in
her own way, as he imagined, readily enough: "Hey diddle-diddle, the
cat's in the fiddle, fe fo fi fum, chumpty-chumpty-chum, with bings
on her ringers, and tells on her boes."

They all listened with grave attention, as if he had said something
very important. Then the woman continued: "Huanatopa ana ana
quiltahou."

To which Martin answered, "Theophilus Thistle, the thistle-sifter,
sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles; and if Theophilus--oh, I won't
say any more!"