I leant forward to see him better, and a piece of lava, detached by
my hand, went pattering down the slope. He looked up guiltily,
and his eyes met mine. Forthwith he scrambled to his feet,
and stood wiping his clumsy hand across his mouth and regarding me.
His legs were scarcely half the length of his body.
So, staring one another out of countenance, we remained for perhaps
the space of a minute. Then, stopping to look back once or twice,
he slunk off among the bushes to the right of me, and I heard
the swish of the fronds grow faint in the distance and die away.
Long after he had disappeared, I remained sitting up staring
in the direction of his retreat. My drowsy tranquillity
had gone.

I was startled by a noise behind me, and turning suddenly saw
the flapping white tail of a rabbit vanishing up the slope.
I jumped to my feet. The apparition of this grotesque, half-bestial
creature had suddenly populated the stillness of the afternoon for me.
I looked around me rather nervously, and regretted that I was unarmed.
Then I thought that the man I had just seen had been clothed
in bluish cloth, had not been naked as a savage would have been;
and I tried to persuade myself from that fact that he was after all
probably a peaceful character, that the dull ferocity of his countenance
belied him.

Yet I was greatly disturbed at the apparition. I walked
to the left along the slope, turning my head about and peering
this way and that among the straight stems of the trees.
Why should a man go on all-fours and drink with his lips? Presently I
heard an animal wailing again, and taking it to be the puma, I turned