t, for the
negro was not much injured by it, although it had held him so firmly.
He had the marks of the animal's tusks on one of his legs; but the wound
was not a dangerous one. Ralph bound his handkerchief around it, and
felt very glad to find that the poor fellow was almost as good as new.

Finding himself able to walk, and seeming to realize how much he owed to
his young rescuer, the stout negro grasped the boy's right hand in both
his own, and with tears glistening in his eyes, uttered a number of
rapid sentences, only a few words of which Ralph could understand, but
which were evidently the outpourings of gratitude.

Still, there was in his manner an appearance of apprehension, as if he
feared that the lad might not be alone. He would glance furtively about,
like one who is expecting an enemy; and it was plain that he was
meditating a retreat.

Back of the rocks there was dry, firm land; and in this direction he
looked, as if desirous of moving off.

Ralph recalled the conversation which he had heard the day before about
the runaway slave.

"This man may be Jumbo himself," he thought. "I'll try to make him
understand me."

Then, looking kindly in the negro's face, he said, in Spanish:

"I think you are Jumbo. I am only a boy, and I am all alone. You are
free; you can go where you will."

And he pointed to the deep, free woods.

Ralph had great difficulty in getting out this amount of Castilian; but
the negro, whose own command of that language seemed to be of the most
meagre description, comprehended his meaning. He took the spirit, if not
the words.

A grateful expression came over his dark face, and again he clasped the
boy's hand, with the same flow of mingled African and Spanish upon his
tongue.

Ralph bade him a kind good-by, and he walked away into the forest,
waving his sable hand with a gesture full of feeling as he disappeared.

Our young sailor now proceeded to examine the animal he had killed.

It is said that the timid man is afraid before the danger, the coward
during it, and the brave man after it. Ralph was afraid after it.

He felt a kind of weakness about the knees, and wondered that he had not
noticed it before. He remembered how the bristles had stood up on the
boar's back, how the savage jaws had clashed together, and how he had
seen the tusks standing out like long knives as the creature came
straight for him.

Now how grim the monster looked as he lay in the mud and water,