passionate fondness for the jumping-jack, or engaged in
guiding the deliberations of his counsellors, the earnest chief was
equally devoted to the work in hand. Being a savage--and, consequently,
led entirely by feeling, which is perhaps the chief characteristic of
savage, as distinguished from civilised, man,--he hated his enemies with
exceeding bitterness, and loved his friends with all his heart.

Yambo was very tender to Harold during his illness, and the latter felt
corresponding gratitude, so that there sprang up between the two a
closer friendship than one could have supposed to be possible,
considering that they were so different from each other, mentally,
physically, and socially, and that their only mode of exchanging ideas
was through the medium of a very incompetent interpreter.

Among other things Harold discovered that his friend the chief was
extremely fond of anecdotes and stories. He, therefore, while in a
convalescent state and unable for much physical exercise, amused
himself, and spent much of his time, in narrating to him the adventures
of Robinson Crusoe. Yambo's appetite for mental food increased, and
when Crusoe's tale was finished he eagerly demanded more. Some of his
warriors also came to hear, and at last the hut was unable to contain
the audiences that wished to enter. Harold, therefore, removed to an
open space under a banyan-tree, and there daily, for several hours,
related all the tales and narratives with which he was acquainted, to
the hundreds of open-eyed and open-mouthed negroes who squatted around
him.

At first he selected such tales as he thought would be likely to amuse,
but these being soon exhausted, he told them about anything that chanced
to recur to his memory. Then, finding that their power to swallow the
marvellous was somewhat crocodilish, he gave them Jack the Giant-killer,
and Jack of Beanstalk notoriety, and Tom Thumb, Cinderella, etcetera,
until his entire nursery stock was exhausted, after which he fell back
on his inventive powers; but the labour of this last effort proving very
considerable, and the results not being adequately great, he took to
history, and told them stories about William Tell, and Wallace, and
Bruce, and the Puritans of England, and the Scottish Covenanters, and
the discoveries of Columbus, until the eyes and mouths of his black
auditors were held so constantly and widely on the stretch, that Disco
began to fear they would become gradually