shelter.
Nor are cobbles good to run upon....

"I think we'd better be going," I suggested, and caught sight of my
companion, and stopped.

He still wore his wool cap, and it occurred to me even then that he had
not turned a hair throughout our flight. But now his face was curiously
splotched red and white and his eyes blazed seaward in fixity. He did
not budge.

"Tell me," said Angus Jones--"tell me what was that word with which they
harried us a while back? I seemed to spy a meaning. The one word they
had for us alike?"

"_Va-se'mbora?_" I said, fidgeting. "Oh, it's the common repulse to
beggars and nuisances. You say it when you want to be rid of some one.
_Va-se'mbora!_ Which means in the vernacular: Chase yourself."

"Chase yourself," repeated Angus Jones softly. "Think of that now! They
seek to tax us. They refuse us dole. They beat us here and yon. They
will not let us go, though we would only leave their country for their
country's good.... Withal they tell us: Chase yourself! And they are, as
you say, a simple people, living on a far island."

The tawny head was close in.

"It's time to move," I urged.

But Angus Jones picked up an oar and cut the painter from a fishing boat
and went down to the water's edge. He made a singular figure on Funchal
beach, drawn to all his lean height, with the clothes flapping on him
as he struck a noble pose. For myself I retreated among the boats where
I might hide in some cuddy.

"Observe the epic grandeur of the scene," declaimed Angus Jones. "Here I
stand on a rock in mid-Atlantic to meet the raging monarch of the
midmost jungle. 'Tis lofty, incredible--in a sense, miraculous."

The man was mad.... I called to him again.

"For Heaven's sake, come away!"

But Angus Jones smiled out over the blue bay.

"As if St. Patrick were to welcome a sea serpent in the dales of
Wexford!" he added, raising his oar.

And there crawled out of the wash at his feet a full-grown male lion,
gaunt and sopping, with crimson jaws distended....

From afar among the fishing boats I thought many things very swiftly:
that I must close my eyes tight against the cruel, bright Madeira sun
and what it would show--this for one; that I should never again feed
crude Malaga to a man with an empty stomach--for another; that perhaps
the animal might be somewhat assuaged with the sea water, and finally
that here, after all, was a miracle, as he had said.

For quite surely I saw Angus Jones fe