suggested that it was time
they were going on. While proceeding up stream Ralph related his own
and Ben's experience with the spider, whereat the mate laughed heartily.

"I am familiar with the species," said he. "True, they do look scary
enough, but, strange to say, they are perfectly harmless. Instead of
teeth, their mouth is supplied with a kind of suction apparatus by
which they suck the blood from smaller insects. But they cannot bite,
nor is their touch poisonous. There are other, smaller kinds of
spiders about here, however, whose bite is fatal."

"We were jist as bad scared as if it had been a rattlesnake," returned
Ben. "I could feel me bloomin' hair turnin' gray when the thing was
cocked upon me shoulder."

Towards night they came to a dozen or more small huts made of palm
leaves and elephant grass, from which issued a number of nearly naked
blacks, who made the air hideous with shouts of welcome.

Here was where they were to trade for fresh meat and vegetables--the
object of their river trip.

One tall savage, with a pair of bullock's horns as a head dress, and
with his hair reeking with grease, coiled round the same, appeared to
be the head man of the village.

He wore a long red flannel shirt as an additional badge of dignity.
The rest, men as well as women, wore little else but cloths about the
loins.

They were a jolly, sociable set though, and gave our party a hut to
themselves, after supplying them with a bountiful supper of "mealies,"
bull beef, and a kind of bread made from ground maize and the grated
buds of the cabbage palm.

After that Mr. Duff and the chief began a laborious trade for meat and
vegetables that lasted for an hour or more, and was carried on
principally by signs and gestures. Some red blankets, beads, and cheap
hand mirrors constituted the offers on the part of the mate.

In this way several bushels of potatoes and a lot of green corn were
secured and placed by the natives in the yawl. Meanwhile another
party, taking torches, proceeded to a corral near by, and slaughtered a
fat ox, with great dexterity. This, in its turn, was placed in the
boat, after which all hands prepared to turn in.

"One of us must sleep in the yawl," remarked Duff, "and I guess it
ought to be the lightest sleeper."

Ben volunteered, saying that he would waken, as he expressed it, "at
the bat of a cat's eye."

Leaving Ben in the boat with a blanket and Winchester, the other two
retired