while poor F. put in the days trying to find another sable. Every
morning he started out before daylight. I could see the light of his
lantern outside the tent; and I stretched myself in the luxurious
consciousness that I should hear no deprecating but insistent "hodie"
from my boy until I pleased to invite it. In the afternoon or evening F.
would return, quite exhausted and dripping, with only the report of new
country traversed. No sable; no tracks of sable; no old signs, even, of
sable. Gradually it was borne in on me how lucky I was to have come upon
my magnificent specimen so promptly and in such favourable
circumstances.

A leisurely breakfast alone, with the sun climbing; then the writing of
notes, a little reading, and perhaps a stroll to the village or along
the top of the ridge. At the heat of noon a siesta with a cool cocoanut
at my elbow. The view was beautiful on all sides; our great tree full of
birds; the rising and dying winds in the palms like the gathering
oncoming rush of the rains. From mountain to mountain sounded the wild,
far-carrying ululations of the natives, conveying news or messages
across the wide jungle. Towards sunset I wandered out in the groves,
enjoying the many bright flowers, the tall, sweet grasses, and the
cocoa-palms against the sky. Piles of cocoanuts lay on the ground,
covered each with a leaf plaited in a peculiarly individual manner to
indicate ownership. Small boys, like little black imps, clung naked
half-way up the slim trunks of the palms, watching me bright-eyed above
the undergrowth. In all directions, crossing and recrossing, ran a maze
of beaten paths. Each led somewhere, but it would require the memory
of--well, of a native, to keep all their destinations in mind.

I used to follow some of them to their ending in little cocoa-leaf
houses on the tops of knolls or beneath mangoes; and would talk with the