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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!”

Then she said, “Quira-holata silhoa mari changa changa.”

“Cock-a-doodle-do!” cried Martin, getting tired and impatient.  “Baa, baa, black sheep, bow, wow, wow; goosey, goosey gander; see-saw, Mary Daw; chick-a-dee-dee, will you listen to me.  And now let me go!”

But she held him fast and kept on talking her nonsense language to him, until becoming vexed he caught hold of her hair and pulled it.  She only laughed and tossed him up into the air and caught him again, just as he might have tossed and caught a small kitten.  At length she released him, for now they were all beginning to lie down by the fire to sleep, as it was getting dark; Martin being very tired settled himself down among them, and as one of the women threw a skin over him he slept very comfortably.

Next morning the hills looked nearer than ever just across the river; but little he cared for hills now, and when the little savage children went out to hunt for berries and sweet roots he followed and spent the day agreeably enough in their company.

On the afternoon of the second day his new playfellows all threw off their little skin cloaks and plunged into the stream to bathe; and Martin, seeing how much they seemed to enjoy being in the water, undressed himself and went in after them.  The water was not too deep in that place, and as it was rare fun splashing about and trying to keep his legs in the swift current and clambering over slippery rocks, he went out some distance from the bank.  All at