he slimmer and slighter figure of the Central
American Indian with long, straight, black hair and copper-coloured
skin. But these were the extreme types; the majority were a mixture of
the two races, and the mingling of African and American blood appeared
to have had a beneficent effect upon both, the product being an
individual of less bulky frame perhaps than his negro progenitor, but
lithe, active, supple, and apparently of tireless endurance, superior in
intelligence, courage, and good looks to either of the extremes.

The appearance of the two white men, escorted by half a dozen of their
own tribe, but apparently not as prisoners, was productive of tremendous
excitement among the villagers, to whom such an occurrence was almost
unique, for they had only known it to occur once before; but the
excitement soon became passive when the leader of the party who had
found George and Dyer explained in a few words that the strangers were
Englishmen and friends of _El Draque_, and that they had landed from a
big canoe, in which they had crossed the Great Water, in order to obtain
certain information concerning the city of Nombre.

The tale was scarcely told when there emerged from a hut somewhat larger
than the others an individual who, in addition to the apron round his
loins, wore a cloak composed entirely of feathers of the most varied and
beautiful colours, worked into a sort of pattern, and a coronet made of
wing and tail feathers bound about his brows. This was of course
Lukabela, the village chieftain, and as George beheld the man coming
forward attired in all his finery, he more than suspected that Lukabela
had purposely delayed his appearance in order to gain time for the
assumption of those symbols of his rank.

Lukabela, petty chieftain of the Cimarrones, was certainly a very fine
and imposing figure of a man, as tall as George, with a body and limbs
that might have been modelled by a Greek sculptor, and a rather small
head. His features were well shaped, his expression keenly intelligent,
indomitably resolute, fearless, and somewhat haughty, and there was a
certain hardness about the chiselling of his mouth that suggested
cruelty. But he listened gravely, yet with a certain restraint, as
George explained to him in Spanish the object of his and Dyer's inland
journey; and when, in the course of his explanation, George mentioned
that _El Draque_ was a personal friend of his, Lukabela's reserve
vanished, and he