days. When completed it was a rude instrument, scarcely tunable;
nevertheless when I smote the strings, playing lively music, or
accompanied myself in singing, I found that it was a great
success, and so was as much pleased with my own performance as if
I had had the most perfect guitar ever made in old Spain. I also
skipped about the floor, strum-strumming at the same time,
instructing them in the most lively dances of the whites, in
which the feet must be as nimble as the player's fingers. It is
true that these exhibitions were always witnessed by the adults
with a profound gravity, which would have disheartened a stranger
to their ways. They were a set of hollow bronze statues that
looked at me, but I knew that the living animals inside of them
were tickled at my singing, strumming, and pirouetting. Cla-cla
was, however, an exception, and encouraged me not infrequently by
emitting a sound, half cackle and half screech, by way of
laughter; for she had come to her second childhood, or, at all
events, had dropped the stolid mask which the young Guayana
savage, in imitation of his elders, adjusts to his face at about
the age of twelve, to wear it thereafter all his life long, or
only to drop it occasionally when very drunk. The youngsters also
openly manifested their pleasure, although, as a rule, they try
to restrain their feelings in the presence of grown-up people,
and with them I became a greet favourite.

By and by I returned to my foil-making, and gave them fencing
lessons, and sometimes invited two or three of the biggest boys
to attack me simultaneously, just to show how easily I could
disarm and kill them. This practice excited some interest in
Kua-ko, who had a little more of curiosity and geniality and less
of the put-on dignity of the others, and with him I became most