killing and eating than we do our purring pussies and
lemon-coloured canaries--must now look more strikingly valiant
and cock-like than ever, with its crimson comb and wattles,
burnished red hackles, and dark green arching tail-plumes. But
Kua-ko, while willing enough to have it admired and praised,
would not let it out of his hands, and told them pompously that
it was not theirs for them to handle, but his--Kua-ko's--for all
time; that he had won it by accompanying me--valorous man that he
was!--to that evil wood into which they--timid, inferior
creatures that they were!--would never have ventured to set foot.
I am not translating his words, but that was what he gave them to
understand pretty plainly, to my great amusement.

After the excitement was over, Runi, who had maintained a
dignified calm, made some roundabout remarks, apparently with the
object of eliciting an account of what I had seen and heard in
the forest of evil fame. I replied carelessly that I had seen a
great many birds and monkeys--monkeys so tame that I might have
procured one if I had had a blow-pipe, in spite of my never
having practiced shooting with that weapon.

It interested them to hear about the abundance and tameness of
the monkeys, although it was scarcely news; but how tame they
must have been when I, the stranger not to the manner born--not
naked, brown-skinned, lynx-eyed, and noiseless as an owl in his
movements--had yet been able to look closely at them! Runi only
remarked, apropos of what I had told him, that they could not go
there to hunt; then he asked me if I feared nothing.

"Nothing," I replied carelessly. "The things you fear hurt not