, for the beast followed us about like a dog. It
could scarcely endure to be separated from either of us for any great
length of time, and it seemed never so happy as when lying at full
length on the floor of the veranda, before my chair, with my feet
lightly resting upon its body, as upon a footstool. And upon the now
comparatively rare occasions when we took a trip in the boat, Kit was
invariably to be found on the beach, waiting and watching for our
return; and it was amusing to observe the delighted gambols in which he
indulged as we stepped ashore.

The new bows and arrows being at length ready, Billy and I started for
Cliff Island on a certain morning, for the purpose of presenting the
weapons to their prospective owners. Upon our arrival we were received
by the natives with their accustomed cordiality, and I at once handed
over our gift to Bowata, the chief, who was profuse in his expressions
of gratitude. I had by this time acquired a sufficient grasp of their
very simple language to enable me to make a pretty shrewd guess at their
meaning when they spoke to me, and also to make myself fairly well
understood by them, and I gathered from Bowata that the gift was
singularly opportune, inasmuch as that the apes had of late, for some
inexplicable reason, been unusually pertinacious in their raids upon the
island; but that, thanks to my original gift, their attacks had been
successfully withstood without loss of life on the part of the natives,
the invading apes having all been slain before it was possible for them
to effect a landing. The little fellow was immensely proud of those
achievements--as indeed he might well be, considering that before the
bow-and-arrow era every raid by the apes had resulted in the death of
one or two natives and the more or less serious maiming of others; and
so proud was he of the skill which he and his people had developed that
he must needs set up a target, there and then, that I might witness a
display of that skill. It now became apparent that Bowata was by no
means devoid of shrewdness, for not only had he personally practised
assiduously at the target, but he had insisted that the petty chiefs who
had been entrusted with bows should do the same; and, not content with
that, he had chosen some two dozen other men, all of whom he had
personally trained; so that when I turned up with my gift he had already
about thirty men, every one of them a quite fairly expert bowman. I
coul