mbu-tree. By and by I listen, and hear my
brother's bones go crash! crash! crash! De tiger is enjoying his supper!'

'But, _capataz_,' I said, with a shudder, 'did you make no attempt to save
your brother chief?'

'Not much! You see, he all same as dead. Suppose I den shoot, p'r'aps I
kill him for true; 'sides, I bad Gaucho den; not love anybody mooch. Next
day I kill dat tiger proper, and his skin make good ponchos. Ha! ha!'

Many a time during the Gaucho's recital he had paused and looked uneasily
around him, for ever and anon the woods re-echoed with strange cries. We
white men had not lived long enough in beast-haunted wildernesses to
distinguish what those sounds were, whether they proceeded from bird or
beast.

As the _capataz_ stopped speaking, and we all sat silent for a short time,
the cries were redoubled. They certainly were not calculated to raise our
spirits: some were wild and unearthly in the extreme, some were growls of
evident anger, some mere groanings, as if they proceeded from creatures
dying in pain and torment, while others again began in a low and most
mournful moan, rising quickly into a hideous, frightened, broken, or
gurgling yell, then dying away again in dreary cadence.

I could not help shuddering a little as I looked behind me into the
darkness of the forest. The whole place had an uncanny, haunted sort of
look, and I even began to wonder whether we might not possibly be the
victims of enchantment. Would we awaken in the morning and find no trees,
no wood, no water, only a green canon, with cliffs and hills on every
side?

'Look, look!' I cried, starting half up at last. 'Did none of you see
that?'

'What is it? Speak, Murdoch!' cried Archie; 'your face is enough to
frighten a fellow.'

I pressed my hand to my forehead.

'Surely,' I said, 'I am going to be ill, but I thought I could distinctly
see a tall grey figure standing among the trees.'

We resumed talking, but in a lower, quieter key. The events of the
evening, our strange surroundings, the whispering trees, the occasional
strange cries, and the mournful beauty of the night, seemed to have cast a
glamour over every heart that was here; and though it was now long past
our usual hour for bed, no one appeared wishful to retire.

All at once Archie grasped me by the shoulder and glanced fearfully into
the forest behind me. I dared scarcely turn my head till the click of
Yambo's revolver reassured me.

Yes, there was the fi