“But who taught you to call them monkey-cups?” asked Yeo, trembling with excitement.

“Monkey’s drink; mono drink.”

“Mono?” said Yeo, foiled on one cast, and now trying another.  “How did you know the beasts were called monos?”

“She might have heard it coming down with us,” said Cary, who had joined the group.

“Ay, monos,” said she, in a self-justifying tone.  “Faces like little men, and tails.  And one very dirty black one, with a beard, say Amen in a tree to all the other monkeys, just like Sir John on Sunday.”

This allusion to Brimblecombe and the preaching apes upset all but old Yeo.

“But don’t you recollect any Christians?—­white people?”

She was silent.

“Don’t you mind a white lady?”

“Um?”

“A woman, a very pretty woman, with hair like his?” pointing to Amyas.

“No.”

“What do you mind, then, beside those Indians?” added Yeo, in despair.

She turned her back on him peevishly, as if tired with the efforts of her memory.

“Do try to remember,” said Amyas; and she set to work again at once.

“Ayacanora mind great monkeys—­black, oh, so high,” and she held up her hand above her head, and made a violent gesture of disgust.

“Monkeys? what, with tails?”

“No, like man.  Ah! yes—­just like Cooky there—­dirty Cooky!”

And that hapless son of Ham, who happened to be just crossing the main-deck, heard a marlingspike, which by ill luck was lying at hand, flying past his ears.

“Ayacanora, if you heave any more things at Cooky, I must have you whipped,” said Amyas, without, of course, any such intention.

“I’ll kill you, then,” answered she, in the most matter-of-fact tone.

“She must mean negurs,” said Yeo; “I wonder where she saw them, now.  What if it were they Cimaroons?”

“But why should any one who had seen whites forget them, and yet remember negroes?” asked Cary.

“Let us try again.  Do you mind no great monkeys but those black ones?” asked Amyas.

“Yes,” she said, after a while,—­“devil.”

“Devil?” asked all three, who, of course, were by no means free from the belief that the fiend did actually appear to the Indian conjurors, such as had brought up the girl.

“Ay, him Sir John tell about on Sundays.”

“Save and help us!” said Yeo; “and what was he like unto?”

She made various signs to intimate that he had a monkey’s face, and a gray beard like Yeo’s.  So far so good:  but now came a series of manipulations about her pretty little neck, which set all their fancies at fault.

“I know,” said Cary, at last, bursting into a great laugh.  “Sir Urian had a ruff on, as I live!  Trunk-hose too, my fair dame?  Stop—­I’ll make sure.  Was his neck like the senor commandant’s, the Spaniard?”

Ayacanora clapped her hands at finding herself understood, and the questioning went on.