, he stopped at the foot of an enormous
ficus--the tree of which the different kinds are so numerous all over
the Upper Amazon basin.

To seize the trunk with his four hands, to climb with the agility of a
clown who is acting the monkey, to hook on with his prehensile tail to
the first branches, which stretched away horizontally at forty feet from
the ground, and to hoist himself to the top of the tree, to the point
where the higher branches just bent beneath its weight, was only sport
to the active guariba, and the work of but a few seconds.

Up there, installed at his ease, he resumed his interrupted repast, and
gathered the fruits which were within his reach. Torres, like him, was
much in want of something to eat and drink, but it was impossible! His
pouch was flat, his flask was empty.

However, instead of retracing his steps he directed them toward the
tree, although the position taken up by the monkey was still more
unfavorable for him. He could not dream for one instant of climbing the
ficus, which the thief would have quickly abandoned for another.

And all the time the miserable case rattled at his ear.

Then in his fury, in his folly, Torres apostrophized the guariba. It
would be impossible for us to tell the series of invectives in which he
indulged. Not only did he call him a half-breed, which is the
greatest of insults in the mouth of a Brazilian of white descent, but
_"curiboca"_--that is to say, half-breed negro and Indian, and of all
the insults that one man can hurl at another in this equatorial latitude
_"curiboca"_ is the cruelest.

But the monkey, who was only a humble quadruman, was simply amused at
what would have revolted a representative of humanity.

Then Torres began to throw stones at him again, and bits of roots and
everything he could get hold of that would do for a missile. Had he the
hope to seriously hurt the monkey? No! he no longer knew what he was
about. To tell the truth, anger at his powerlessness had deprived him
of his wits. Perhaps he hoped that in one of the movements which the
guariba would make in passing from branch to branch the case might
escape him, perhaps he thought that if he continued to worry the monkey
he might throw it at his head. But no! the monkey did not part with the
case, and, holding it with one hand, he had still three left with which
to move.

Torres, in despair, was just about to abandon the chase for good, and
to return toward the Amazon, when he