avy stamp on the marble surface. He was a most peculiar old fellow;
for, unlike again most of the negroes, who only wear any foot covering
on Sundays, when they torture themselves horribly by squeezing their
spreading toes into patent leather pumps if they can get them by hook or
by crook, the old darkey invariably stalked about in a tall pair of
Wellington boots that made him walk as gingerly as a cat with its paws
in walnut shells.

"Hey, Mass' Tom, look smart," he sang out in response. "Um big 'guana
down by de stable; come quick an' bring 'tick an' we kill him togedder!"

An iguana? This was something to make one excited; for, harmless though
the reptile is, one does not come across one everyday. Besides, it is
capital eating, tasting just like a chicken, and that of the tenderest:
you could not tell the difference between the two when well cooked.

Catching up a thick stick, I was after Pompey in a minute, forgetting
alike the heat of the sun's rays in the open--although but a short
period before I had been forced to retreat under the shade of the
verandah--and my anxious watch for Jake with news of the mail steamer,
about whose delay I had been so impatient.

I soon overtook the darkey, who never could make much headway in his
boots. They were so big for him that I believe his feet used to have a
quiet walk inside them on their own account!

"Where's the 'guana?" I said.

"Just dere, Mass' Tom," he replied, pointing with one of his lean, bony,
mottled fingers, the black colour of which seemed to have been worked
off them by years of rough usage.

"Where?" I repeated, for I could not see the animal as yet anywhere.

"Dere, on manure heap--see?"

"Yes, I see now," I replied, as, getting nearer to the stables, I
noticed something on the top of a mound of straw rubbish. It was a
creature like a gigantic lizard, some five or six feet long and as broad
about the head as a decent-sized pig.

"Yah, yah, dere he is, dere he is!" shouted out Pompey. "Golly, Mass'
Tom, he am big 'guana, too! Give me de 'tick, and dis niggah will soon
'top um runnin' 'way."

The green-looking creature had been basking in the sun, enjoying itself
all the more, probably, from the warmth of the manure heap on which it
lay; but now, on our nearer approach, it raised its serpent-like head
and, puffing out its creamy throat, grew in an instant to double its
former size, while the beautiful iridescent colouring of its skin beca