are, but as you get better you forget all this, and the
jaundiced feeling soon wears off, and you start off collecting again
as keen as ever. One day a small skinny brown dog somehow managed to
climb up the bamboo step into my hut during Vic's temporary absence,
and I suddenly awoke to find it helping itself to the contents of a
plate that Vic had placed by my side. I was far too ill to do more
than frighten it away. This happened a second time before I was strong
enough to move, but the third time I was well enough to seize my small
collecting gun (which was loaded with very small cartridges), and
when it was about thirty yards away I fired at it, simply intending to
frighten it, as at that distance these small cartridges would hardly
have killed a small bird. It stopped suddenly and, after spinning
round a few times yelping, it turned over on its back. Even then I
thought it was shamming, but on going up to it I found it was dead,
with only one No. 8 shot in its spleen. On Vic's return he was much
alarmed, as he said the dog belonged to the Negrito chief, who was
very fond of it, and would be very angry with me if he knew. So we
hid the body in the middle of a clump of bamboo about a quarter of
a mile away from the hut. But the following day the sky was thick
with a kind of turkey buzzard, which had evidently smelt the dog's
corpse from some distance, and they were soon quarrelling over the
remains. Vic worked himself up into a state of panic, saying that it
would be discovered by the Negritos, but a few days later I sent him
over to the Negrito chief's hut to get me some rice, and the chief
mentioned that his chief wife had lost her dog, which she was very
fond of, and that he thought that I must have killed it. Vic in reply
said that that could never be, as in the country that I came from
the people were so fond of dogs that they were very kind to them,
and treated them like their own fathers. The chief then said that a
pig must have killed it, and so the incident ended.

About this time Vic asked my permission to return to Florida Blanca
for a few days, as he had heard that his wife had run away with another
man, and he offered to send his brother to take his place. His brother
could also speak English a little, and was assistant schoolmaster to
the American. He proved, however, an arrant coward, and, like most
Filipinos, lived in great fear of the Negritos. When out with me
in the forest he would start, if he hear