ecimen of
humanity as could be met in a day's march, for he had only one eye, and
beneath that a peculiar, puckered scar extending down to the corner of
his mouth, shaggy short hair, neither black nor grey--a kind of
pepper-and-salt colour--yellow teeth in a very large mouth, and a skin
so dark and hairy that he looked like some kind of savage, dressed in a
pair of canvas trousers and a shirt that had once been scarlet, but was
now stained, faded, and rubbed into a neutral grub or warm earthy tint.
He wore no braces, but a kind of belt of what seemed to be snake or
lizard skin, fastened with either a silver or pewter buckle. Add to
this the fact that his feet were bare, his sleeves rolled up over his
mahogany-coloured arms, and that his shirt was open at the throat,
showing his full neck and hairy chest; add also that he was about five
feet, nine, very broad-shouldered and muscular, and you have Shadrach
Naylor, about the last person any one would take to be an Englishman or
select for a companion on a trip up one of the grandest rivers of South
America.

But there he was that hot, sunny day, standing up in the stern of the
broad, lightly built boat which swung by a long rope some fifty feet
behind a large schooner, of shallow draught but of lofty rig, so that
her tremendous tapering masts might carry their sails high above the
trees which formed a verdant wall on each side of the great river, and
so catch the breeze when all below was sheltered and calm.

The schooner was not anchored, but fast aground upon one of the shifting
sand-banks that made navigation difficult. Here she was likely to lie
until the water rose, or a fresh cool wind blew from the south and
roughened the dull silvery gleaming surface into waves where she could
roll and rock and work a channel for herself through the sand, and sail
onward tugging the boat which swung behind.

It was hot, blistering hot! and all was very still save for the rippling
murmur of the flowing river and the faint buzz of the insect plagues
which had come hunting from the western shore, a couple of hundred yards
away, while the eastern was fully two miles off, and the voices of the
man and the boy he addressed sounded strange in the vast solitudes
through which the mighty river ran.

Not that these two were alone, for there were five more occupants of the
boat, one a white man--from his dress--a leg being visible beneath a
kind of awning formed of canvas, the other fou