met him face
to face.

It was an Indian girl; and yet, when he looked again,--was it an Indian
girl? Amyas had seen hundreds of those delicate dark-skinned daughters
of the forest, but never such a one as this. Her stature was taller,
her limbs were fuller and more rounded; her complexion, though tanned by
light, was fairer by far than his own sunburnt face; her hair, crowned
with a garland of white flowers, was not lank, and straight, and black,
like an Indian's, but of a rich, glossy brown, and curling richly and
crisply from her very temples to her knees. Her forehead, though low,
was upright and ample; her nose was straight and small; her lips, the
lips of a European; her whole face of the highest and richest type of
Spanish beauty; a collar of gold mingled with green beads hung round her
neck, and golden bracelets were on her wrists. All the strange and dim
legends of white Indians, and of nations of a higher race than Carib, or
Arrowak, or Solimo, which Amyas had ever heard, rose up in his memory.
She must be the daughter of some great cacique, perhaps of the lost
Incas themselves--why not? And full of simple wonder, he gazed upon
that fairy vision, while she, unabashed in her free innocence, gazed
fearlessly in return, as Eve might have done in Paradise, upon the
mighty stature, and the strange garments, and above all, on the bushy
beard and flowing yellow locks of the Englishman.

He spoke first, in some Indian tongue, gently and smilingly, and made
a half-step forward; but quick as light she caught up from the ground a
bow, and held it fiercely toward him, fitted with the long arrow,
with which, as he could see, she had been striking fish, for a line of
twisted grass hung from its barbed head. Amyas stopped, laid down his
own bow and sword, and made another step in advance, smiling still,
and making all Indian signs of amity: but the arrow was still pointed
straight at his breast, and he knew the mettle and strength of the
forest nymphs well enough to stand still and call for the Indian boy;
too proud to retreat, but in the uncomfortable expectation of feeling
every moment the shaft quivering between his ribs.

The boy, who had been peering from above, leaped down to them in a
moment; and began, as the safest method, grovelling on his nose upon the
pebbles, while he tried two or three dialects; one of which at last she
seemed to understand, and answered in a tone of evident suspicion and
anger.

"What does