be coming today."

Visitors, indeed, soon began to arrive; and it was more than a week
before the curiosity of the crowd was at all satisfied. But even
this did not bring what Roger considered a terrible annoyance to an
end; for the news had spread rapidly, through all the country
round, of the strange white being who had come to Tabasco, and
parties of visitors kept on arriving, some of them from a great
distance.

Roger, however, had made a good use of his tongue. He kept one or
other of the girls always near him, and by touching the articles
brought to him as presents, the garments and arms of his visitors,
and the various objects in his room, he soon learned their names.

Almost every day the chief sent for him, for a talk; but as neither
party could understand the other, these conversations generally
ended by a sudden loss of temper, on the part of the cazique, at
being unable to obtain the information he required as to the origin
of his visitor, and the object with which he had come to his
country.

Having acquired a large number of the names of objects, Roger, for
a time, came to a standstill. Then it struck him that by listening
to what the old woman said to the girls, and by watching what they
did, he might make a step farther.

In this way he soon learned "bring me," "fetch me," and other
verbs. When the old woman was present, the two girls were silent
and shy; but as Quizmoa was fond of gossiping, and so was greatly
in request among the neighbors, who desired to learn something of
the habits of the white man, she was often out; and the girls were
then ready to talk as much as Roger wished. For a time it seemed to
him that he was making no progress whatever with the language and,
at the end of the first month, began almost to despair of ever
being able to converse in it; although by this time he had learned
the name of almost every object. Then he found that, perhaps as
much from their gestures as from their words, he began to
understand the girls; and in another month was able to make himself
understood, in turn. After this his progress was extremely rapid.

As soon as Malinche learned, from him, that he belonged to a great
nation of white people, living far away across the sea, and that he
had been wrecked in a ship upon the coast, she warned him against
telling these things to the chief.

"They hold you in high honor," she said, "because they think that
you have come down from the sky, and might d