e isn't
anybody that would go into all that underbrush and water only for a bird
like that, anyway."

"Well, I think it's murder!" cried Corny. "I thought they ate 'em. Here!
Take your gun. I'm much obliged; but I don't want to kill things just
to see them fall down and die."

I took the gun very willingly,--although I did not think that Corny
would injure any birds with it,--but I asked her what she thought about
alligators. She certainly had not supposed that they were killed for
food.

"Alligators are wild beasts," she said. "Give me my pistol. I am going
to take it back to father."

And away she went. Rectus and I did not keep up our rifle practice much
longer. We couldn't hit anything, and the thought that, if we should
wound or kill a bird, it would be of no earthly good to us or anybody
else, made us follow Corny's example, and we put away our gun. But the
other gunners did not stop. As long as daylight lasted a ceaseless
banging was kept up.

We were sitting on the forward deck, looking out at the beautiful scenes
through which we were passing, and occasionally turning back to see that
none of the gunners posted themselves where they might make our
positions uncomfortable, when Corny came back to us.

"Can either of you speak French?" she asked.

Rectus couldn't; but I told her that I understood the language tolerably
well, and asked her why she wished to know.

"It's just this," she said. "You see those two men with yellow boots,
and the lady with them? She's one of their wives."

"How many wives have they got?" interrupted Rectus, speaking to Corny
almost for the first time.

"I mean she is the wife of one of them, of course," she answered, a
little sharply; and then she turned herself somewhat more toward me.
"And the whole set try to make out they're French, for they talk it
nearly all the time. But they're not French, for I heard them talk a
good deal better English than they can talk French; and every time a
branch nearly hits her, that lady sings out in regular English. And,
besides, I know that their French isn't French French, because I can
understand a great deal of it, and if it was I couldn't do it. I can
talk French a good deal better than I can understand it, anyway. The
French people jumble everything up so that I can't make head or tail of
it. Father says he don't wonder they have had so many revolutions, when
they can't speak their own language more distinctly. He tried to learn
it