and some very small indeed, all interested to
distraction in the dead tree-trunk.

"That is where he feeds them," Schillingschen announced. "He has
tested them for hearing, smell, and eyesight. By making fast a living
animal to that post be has been able to convince himself that from
about nine in the morning until five in the afternoon their senses are
limited. Only occasionally do they come and take the bait between
those hours. They are hungriest in the early morning just before
daylight. Recently a large ape tied to the post at midday was not
killed and eaten until four next morning, and that is about the usual
thing, although not the rule. Now my proposal is--"

He stepped back and eyed me with the coldest look of appraisal I ever
sickened under. I blenched at last--visibly suffered under his eye,
and he liked it.

"--that you tell your secret or be fastened to that post from noon,
say, until the crocodiles make an end of you!"

He stepped back a pace farther, perhaps to gloat over my discomfort,
perhaps from fear of some concealed weapon.

"You have not much time to arrive at your decision!"

He took another pace backward. It occurred to me then that he was
looking for some one he expected. Nobody turning up, he began to
gather loose stones and throw them at the reptiles, driving them down
into deep water, first in ones and twos and then by dozens. Most of
them swam away to the far side of the pool, and hid themselves where it
was deep.

Then, panting with having run, there came a native who looked like a
Zulu, for he had enormous thighs and the straight up and down carriage,
as well as facial characteristics.

"You are late!" shouted Schillingschen in German "Warum? What d'ye
mean by it?"

The man opened his mouth wide and made grimaces. He had no tongue.
Schillingschen laughed.

"This is a servant who does no tattling in the market-place!" he said,
turning again toward me. "He and I can tie you to that post easily.
What do you say?"

There was nothing whatever to say, or to do except wonder how to
circumvent him, and nothing in sight that could possibly turn into a
friend--except a little tuft of faded brown that out of the corner of
my eye I detected zigzagging toward me in the direction from which we
had come. A moment later I knew it really was a friend. "Crinkle," a
mongrel dog that Fred had adopted the day after our arrival, breasted
the low rise, saw me, gave a yelp of deligh