Then, leaping into her tiny piragua, she darted into the wildest whirl of the eddies, shooting along with vigorous strokes, while the English trembled as they saw the frail bark spinning and leaping amid the muzzles of the alligators, and the huge dog-toothed trout:  but with the swiftness of an arrow she reached the northern bank, drove her canoe among the bushes, and leaping from it, darted through some narrow opening in the bush, and vanished like a dream.

“What fair virago have you unearthed?” cried Cary, as they toiled up again to the landing-place.

“Beshrew me,” quoth Jack, “but we are in the very land of the nymphs, and I shall expect to see Diana herself next, with the moon on her forehead.”

“Take care, then, where you wander hereabouts, Sir John:  lest you end as Actaeon did, by turning into a stag, and being eaten by a jaguar.”

“Actaeon was eaten by his own hounds, Mr. Cary, so the parallel don’t hold.  But surely she was a very wonder of beauty!”

Why was it that Amyas did not like this harmless talk?  There had come over him the strangest new feeling; as if that fair vision was his property, and the men had no right to talk about her, no right to have even seen her.  And he spoke quite surlily as he said—­

“You may leave the women to themselves, my masters; you’ll have to deal with the men ere long:  so get your canoes up on the rock, and keep good watch.”

“Hillo!” shouted one in a few minutes, “here’s fresh fish enough to feed us all round.  I suppose that young cat-a-mountain left it behind her in her hurry.  I wish she had left her golden chains and ouches into the bargain.”

“Well,” said another, “we’ll take it as fair payment, for having made us drop down the current again to let her ladyship pass.”

“Leave that fish alone,” said Amyas; “it is none of yours.”

“Why, sir!” quoth the finder in a tone of sulky deprecation.

“If we are to make good friends with the heathens, we had better not begin by stealing their goods.  There are plenty more fish in the river; go and catch them, and let the Indians have their own.”

The men were accustomed enough to strict and stern justice in their dealings with the savages:  but they could not help looking slyly at each other, and hinting, when out of sight, that the captain seemed in a mighty fuss about his new acquaintance.

However, they were expert by this time in all the Indian’s fishing methods; and so abundant was the animal life which swarmed around every rock, that in an hour fish enough lay on the beach to feed them all; whose forms and colors, names and families, I must leave the reader to guess from the wondrous pages of Sir Richard Schomburgk, for I know too little of them to speak without the fear of making mistakes.

A full hour passed before they saw anything more of their Indian neighbors; and then from under the bushes shot out a canoe, on which all eyes were fixed in expectation.