ckling internally, nodding her head, and keeping time
with her hands. Evidently she was able to appreciate a style of music
superior to that of the aboriginals, and forthwith I abandoned my foils
for the time and set about the manufacture of a guitar, which cost
me much labour and brought out more ingenuity than I had ever thought
myself capable of. To reduce the wood to the right thinness, then to
bend and fasten it with wooden pegs and with gums, to add the arm,
frets, keys, and finally the catgut strings--those of another kind being
out of the question--kept me busy for some days. When completed it was
a rude instrument, scarcely tunable; nevertheless when I smote the
strings, playing lively music, or accompanied myself in singing, I found
that it was a great success, and so was as much pleased with my own
performance as if I had had the most perfect guitar ever made in old
Spain. I also skipped about the floor, strum-strumming at the same time,
instructing them in the most lively dances of the whites, in which the
feet must be as nimble as the player's fingers. It is true that these
exhibitions were always witnessed by the adults with a profound gravity,
which would have disheartened a stranger to their ways. They were a set
of hollow bronze statues that looked at me, but I knew that the living
animals inside of them were tickled at my singing, strumming, and
pirouetting. Cla-cla was, however, an exception, and encouraged me not
infrequently by emitting a sound, half cackle and half screech, by
way of laughter; for she had come to her second childhood, or, at all
events, had dropped the stolid mask which the young Guayana savage, in
imitation of his elders, adjusts to his face at about the age of twelve,
to wear it thereafter all his life long, or only to drop it occasionally
when very drunk. The youngsters also openly manifested their pleasure,
although, as a rule, they try to restrain their feelings in the presence
of grown-up people, and with them I became a greet favourite.

By and by I returned to my foil-making, and gave them fencing lessons,
and sometimes invited two or three of the biggest boys to attack me
simultaneously, just to show how easily I could disarm and kill them.
This practice excited some interest in Kua-ko, who had a little more of
curiosity and geniality and less of the put-on dignity of the others,
and with him I became most intimate. Fencing with Kua-ko was highly
amusing: no sooner was he i