ound
him, as if to say, "Yes, the Gapo; you see we're in it."

The three interrogators were as much in the dark as ever. Whether the
Gapo was fish, flesh, or fowl, air, fire, or water, they could not even
guess. There was but one upon the galatea besides the Indian himself who
knew the signification of the word which had created such a sensation
among the crew, and this was young Richard Trevannion.

"It's nothing, uncle," said he, hastening to allay the alarm around him;
"old Munday means that we've strayed from the true channel of the
Solimoes, and got into the flooded forest,--that's all."

"The flooded forest?"

"Yes. What you see around us, looking like low bushes, are the tops of
tall trees. We're now aground on the branches of a _sapucaya_,--a
species of the Brazil-nut, and among the tallest of Amazonian trees. I'm
right,--see! there are the nuts themselves!" As the young Paraense
spoke, he pointed to some pericarps, large as cocoa-nuts, that were seen
depending from the branches among which the galatea had caught. Grasping
one of them in his hand, he wrenched it from the branch; but as he did
so, the husk dropped off, and the prism-shaped nuts fell like a shower
of huge hailstones on the roof of the _toldo_. "Monkey-pots they're
called," continued he, referring to the empty pericarp still in his
hand. "That's the name by which the Indians know them; because the
monkeys are very fond of these nuts."

"But the Gapo?" interrupted the ex-miner, observing that the expressive
look of uneasiness still clouded the brow of the Mundurucu.

"It's the Indian name for the great inundation," replied Richard, in the
same tranquil tone. "Or rather I should say, the name for it in the
_lingoa-geral_."

"And what is there to fear? Munday has frightened us all, and seems
frightened himself. What is the cause?"

"That I can't tell you, uncle. I know there are queer stories about the
Gapo,--tales of strange monsters that inhabit it,--huge serpents,
enormous apes, and all that sort of thing. I never believed them,
though the _tapuyos_ do; and from old Munday's actions I suppose he puts
full faith in them."

"The young patron is mistaken," interposed the Indian, speaking a patois
of the _lingoa-geral_. "The Mundurucu does not believe in monsters. He
believes in big serpents and monkeys,--he has seen them."

"But shure yez are not afeerd o' them, Munday?" asked the Irishman.

The Indian only replied by turning on Tipperary