“Well, Rad, what is it?” asked Tom, with businesslike energy.

“I done heah, Massa Tom, dat yo’ all’s gwine off on a long trip once mo’.  Am dat so?”

“Yes, that’s so, Rad.”

“Well, den, I’se come to ast yo’ whut I’d bettah take wif me.  Shall I took warm clothes or cool clothes?”

“Well, if you were going, Rad,” answered Tom with a smile, “you’d need cool clothes, for we’re going to a sort of jungle-land.  But I’m sorry to say you’re not going this trip.”

“I——­ I ain’t gwine?  Does yo’ mean dat yo’ all ain’t gwine to take me, Massa Tom?”

“That’s it, Rad.  It isn’t any trip for you.”

“In certain not!” broke in the voice of Koku, the giant, who entered with a big trunk Tom had sent him for.  “Master want strong man like a bull.  He take Koku!”

“Look heah!” spluttered Eradicate, and his eyes flashed.  “Yo’—­yo’ giant yo’—­yo’ may be strong laik a bull, but ya’ ain’t got as much sense as mah mule, Boomerang!  Massa Tom don’t want no sich pusson wif him.  He’s gwine to take me.”

“He take me!” cried Koku, and his voice was a roar while he beat on his mighty chest with his huge fists.

Tom, seeing that the dispute was likely to be bothersome, winked at Ned and began to speak.

“I don’t believe you’d like it there, Rad—­not where we’re going.  It’s a bad country.  Why the mosquitoes there bite holes in you—­raise bumps on you as big as eggs.”

“Oh, good land!” ejaculated the old colored man.  “Am dat so Massa Tom?”

“It sure is.  Then there’s another kind of bug that burrows under your fingernails, and if you don’t get ’em out, your fingers drop off.”

“Oh, good land, Massa Tom!  Am dat a fact?”

“It sure is.  I don’t want to see those things happen to you, Rad.”

Slowly the old colored man shook his head.

“I don’t mahse’f,” he said.  “I——­ I guess I won’t go.”

Eradicate did not stop to ask how Tom and Ned proposed to combat these two species of insects.

But there remained Koku to dispose of, and he stood smiling broadly as Eradicate shuffled of.

“Me no ’fraid bugs,” said the giant.

“No,” said Tom, with a look at Ned, for he did not want to take the big man on the trip for various reasons.  “No, maybe not, Koku.  Your skin is pretty tough.  But I understand there are deep pools of water in the land where we are going, and in them lives a fish that has a hide like an alligator and a jaw like a shark.  If you fall in it’s all up with you.”

“Dat true, Master Tom?” and Koku’s voice trembled.

“Well, I’ve never seen such a fish, I’m sure, but the natives tell about it.”

Koku seemed to be considering the matter.  Strange as it may seem, the giant, though afraid of nothing human and brave when it came to a hand-to-claw argument with a wild animal, had a very great fear of the water and the unseen life within it.  Even a little fresh-water crab in a brook was enough to send him shrieking to shore.  So when Tom told of this curious fish, which many natives of Central America firmly believe in, the giant took thought with himself.  Finally, he gave a sigh and said: