said Rob eagerly.

"No, my lad; I don't. He had a long swim before him to get to shore;
and it's my belief that he would be 'tacked and pulled under before he
had gone very far."

"How horrible!"

"Yes, my lad; seems horrid, but I don't know. Natur's very curious. If
he was pulled under to be eaten it was only to stop him from pulling
other creatures down and eating them. That's the way matters go on out
in these forests where life swarms, and from top to bottom one thing's
killing and eating another. It's even so with the trees, as I've told
you: the biggest and strongest kill the weak 'uns, and live upon 'em.
It's all nature's way, my lads, and a good one."

"Well, we don't want the Indians to kill us, Shaddy," said Rob merrily.

"And they shan't, my lad, if I can help it. Perhaps we mayn't see any
of them, and one side of the river's safe, so we shall keep that side;
but if they come any of their nonsense with us they must be taught to
keep to themselves with a charge or two of small shot. If that don't
teach them to leave respectable people alone they must taste larger
shot. I don't want to come to bullets 'cept as a last resource."

"I should have liked to have found the puma again," said Rob after a
time.

"Perhaps it's as well not, my lad," said their guide. "It was all very
well, and he liked you, but some day he'd have grown older, and he'd
have turned rusty, and there would have been a fight, and before he was
killed you might have been badly clawed. Wild beasts don't tame very
well. You can trust dogs and cats, which are never so happy as when
they are with human folk; but I never knew any one who did very well
with other things. Ah, here's another of my steps!"

He went to his men again, for they were rowing along a smooth-gliding
reach, at the end of which rough water appeared, and all hands were
called into requisition to help the boat up the long stretch of rapids,
at the end of which, as they glided into smooth water again, Shaddy
declared that they had mounted a good twenty feet.

Day after day was spent in this steady journeying onward. The weather
was glorious, and the forest on either side looked as if it had never
been trod by man. So full of wonders, too, was it for Brazier, that
again and again as night closed in, and they moored on their right to
some tree for the men to land and light their fire and cook, he thanked
their guide for bringing him, as the first botanist, to