sily at work banquetting upon his blood.

The blacks set to work picking them off, and scraping him clear of the
thick vegetable mud that adhered to him; and with the promise that he
was to have a good bathe in the first clear water we encountered, we
once more started, Jack looking anything but cheerful, but stubbornly
protesting that it was wonderful how comfortable his wet clothes made
him feel.

Master Jack had to listen to a lecture from the doctor, in which the
latter pointed out that if success was to attend our expedition, it
would not do for the various members to be darting off at their good
pleasure in search of butterflies, and at first Jack looked very grim,
and frowned as if about to resent it all. To my surprise, however, he
replied:

"I see, doctor; we must be like soldiers and mind the captain. Well,
all right. I won't do so any more."

"I'm sure you will not," said the doctor, holding out his hand. "You
see we must have discipline in our little corps, so as to be able fully
to confide in each other in cases of emergency. We must be men."

Jack scratched his head and looked ruefully from one to the other.

"That's just what I want to be, doctor," he drawled; "but I'm always
doing something that makes me seem like a small boy. I'm grown up a
deal, but somehow I don't feel a bit older than I used to be years ago."

"Ah, well, wait a bit, Penny," replied the doctor; "and we will not say
any more about the butterfly hunt."

Jack's brow seemed to grow as wrinkled as that of an old man, and he was
very solemn for the rest of the day, during which we tramped on through
the forest, its beauties seeming less attractive than in the freshness
of the early morning, and the only striking thing we saw was a pack of
small monkeys, which seemed to have taken a special dislike to Jimmy,
following him from tree to tree, chattering and shrieking the while, and
at last putting the black in a passion, and making him throw his
boomerang savagely up in return for the nuts that were showered down.

"Bad black fellow," he said to me indignantly. "Come down, Jimmy fight
twenty forty all a once."

He flourished his club and showed me how he would clear the ground, but
the monkeys did not accept the challenge, and that night we halted under
a great tree covered with a scarlet plum-like fruit, and proceeded to
set up our tent as a shelter to keep off the heavy dew.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

HOW WATCH WAS KEPT BY NI