ost breaks. Years and
years have I been in this here dismal Munza. Man-eaters and Ephelantoes,
Portingals and blackamoors, chased and harassed up and down, and never a
spark of frost seen, unless on the Snowy Mountains. What wouldn't I give
for a sight of Plymouth now!"

He rose and stretched himself. Facing him, across the unstirring
darkness of the forest shone palely the great new-risen moon. "'Hi, hi,
up she rises,'" said Battle, staring over. "'But what's to be done with
a shipwrecked sailor?' Nobody knows, but who can't tell us. Now, just
one stave, Nod Mulgar, afore we both turns in. Give us 'Cherry-trees.'
No, maybe I'll pipe ye one of Andy's Own, and you shall jine in, same as
t'other." Nod climbed up and stood on his log, his hands clasped behind
his neck, and stamped softly with his feet in time, while Battle, after
tuning up his great gourd--or Juddie, as he called it--plucked the
sounding strings. And soon the Oomgar's voice burst out so loud and
fearless that the prowling panthers paused with cowering head and
twitching ears, and the Jaccatrays out of the shadows lifted their
cringing eyes up to the moon, dolefully listening. And when the last two
lines of each verse had been sung, Battle plucked more loudly at his
strings, and Nod joined in.

"Once and there was a young sailor, yeo ho!
And he sailed out over the say
For the isles where pink coral and palm-branches blow,
And the fire-flies turn night into day,
Yeo ho!
And the fire-flies turn night into day.

"But the _Dolphin_ went down in a tempest, yeo ho!
And with three forsook sailors ashore,
The Portingals took him where sugar-canes grow,
Their slave for to be evermore,
Yeo ho!
Their slave for to be evermore.

"With his musket for mother and brother, yeo ho!
He warred wi' the Cannibals drear,
In forests where panthers pad soft to and fro,
And the Pongo shakes noonday with fear
Yeo ho!
And the Pongo shakes noonday with fear.

"Now lean with long travail, all wasted with woe,
With a monkey for messmate and friend,
He sits 'neath the Cross in the cankering snow,
And waits for his sorrowful end,
Yeo ho!
And waits for his sorrowful end."

[Illustration: NOD DANCED THE JAQQUAS' WAR-DANCE, ... STOOPING AND
CROOKED "WRIGGLE AND STAMP."]

This song sun