to have to kill and eat you."

Rob handed the newly made weapons, and Shaddy took them grumblingly.

"Not the sort of tackle I'm used to," he said. "Bound to say I could do
far better with a gun."

He fitted the notch of the arrow to the string and drew the bow a little
as if to try it; then moving off a few yards under cover of the trees,
Rob was about to follow him, but he turned back directly.

"Don't you come," he said; "better let me try alone. Two of us might
scare 'em."

But Shaddy did not have any occasion to go further, for all at once, as
if in obedience to a signal, the party of monkeys in the forest a short
distance before them came leaping from tree to tree till they were in
the one beneath which the two travellers were waiting, stopped short,
and began to stare down wonderingly at them, one largish fellow holding
back the bough above his head in a singularly human way, while his face
looked puzzled as well as annoyed.

"Like a young savage Indian more than an animal," said Shaddy softly, as
he prepared to shoot. "Now I wonder whether I can bring him down."

"Don't shoot at it, Shaddy!" said Rob, laying his hand upon his guide's
arm.

"Must, my lad. Can't afford to be particular. There, don't you look if
you don't like it! Now then!"

He raised the bow, and, after the fashion off our forefathers, drew the
arrow right to the head, and was about to let it fly after a long and
careful aim; but being, as he had intimated, not used to that sort of
tackle, he kept his forefinger over the reed arrow till he had drawn it
to the head, when, just as he had taken aim and was about to launch it
at the unfortunate monkey, the reed bent and snapped in two.

Probably it was the sharp snap made by the arrow which took the monkey's
attention, for it suddenly set up a peculiarly loud chattering, which
acted as a lead to its companions, for the most part hidden among the
boughs, and it required very little stretch of the imagination to
believe it to be a burst of derisive laughter at the contemptible nature
of the weapons raised against their leader's life.

"Oh, that's the way you take it, is it, my fine fellow?" cried Shaddy,
shaking the bow at the monkey. "Here, give us another arrow, Mr Rob,
sir; I'll teach him to laugh better than that. I feel as if I can hit
him now."

Rob made no attempt to hand the arrow, but Shaddy took one from him,
fitted it to the string, raised it to the required height, an