t have challenged the choir of Pandemonium.
Two alone remained undismayed,--Richard Trevannion and the Mundurucu.

"Bah!" exclaimed the Paraense, "what are you all frightened at? Don't
you know what it is, uncle?"

"I know what it resembles, boy,--the Devil and his legions let loose
from below. What is it, Dick?"

"Only the howlers. Don't be alarmed, little Rosita!"

The little Peruvian, gaining courage from his words, looked admiringly
on the youth who had called her "little Rosita." Any one could have told
that, from that time forward, Richard Trevannion might have the power to
control the destinies of his cousin.

"The howlers! What are they?" inquired the old miner.

"Monkeys, uncle; nothing more. From the noise they make, one might
suppose they were as big as buffaloes. Nothing of the kind. The largest
I ever saw was hardly as stout as a deerhound, though he could make as
much noise as a whole kennel. They have a sort of a drum in the throat,
that acts as a sound-board. That's what enables them to get up such a
row. I've often heard their concert more than two miles across country,
especially in prospect of an approaching storm. I don't know if they
follow this fashion in the Gapo; but if they do, from the way they're
going it now, we may look out for a trifling tornado."

Notwithstanding the apparent unconcern with which young Trevannion
declared himself, there was something in his manner that arrested the
attention of his uncle. While pronouncing his hypothetical forecast of a
storm, he had turned his glance towards the sky, and kept it fixed
there, as if making something more than a transient observation. The fog
had evaporated, and the moon was now coursing across the heavens, not
against a field of cloudy blue, but in the midst of black, cumulous
clouds, that every now and then shrouded her effulgence. A dweller in
the tropics of the Western hemisphere would have pronounced this sign
the certain forerunner of a storm; and so predicted the young Paraense.
"We'll have the sky upon us within an hour," said he, addressing himself
more especially to his uncle. "We'd better tie the galatea to the trees.
If this be a _hurricane_, and she goes adrift, there's no knowing where
we may bring up. The likeliest place will be in the bottom of the Gapo."

"The young patron speaks truth," interposed Munday, his eyes all the
while reading the signs of the heavens. "The Mundurucu knows by yonder
yellow sky."

As he sp