y in order
that if you recovered they might learn from you how you had come there,
after which they would no doubt have killed you. Pita had some difficulty
in obtaining my release, but upon his saying that, although belonging to
another tribe, I was a great friend of his, they handed me over to him.
Since then we have been as natives of the village. We have taken it by
turn to nurse you, and by turns have hunted with the men."

"How long have I been here?"

"Nigh six months, senor."

"Six months!" Stephen repeated; "surely not, Hurka. I never could have
been ill all that time; I must have died long ago."

"You were ill for six weeks, senor, with fever. When at last that passed
away, your mind did not come back to you. Sometimes you raved about a
great snake that was about to seize you; sometimes you thought that you
were wandering in the forest; more often you lay quiet and without saying
anything. We gave you plenty of food and you got stronger, but there was
no change in your mind. A month before your mind came back the fever
seized you again, and we had little hope that you would live; but we had
got medicine from the mission, and just when it seemed to us that you were
on the point of death, you fell into a deep sleep, and when, after lying
for twenty hours so, you opened your eyes and knew Pita, we found that
your mind had come back to you again. That is all."

"And you and Pita have remained here for six months nursing me!" Stephen
said, holding out his hand to the Indian; "you are indeed good comrades
and faithful friends, and I owe my life to you."

The exhaustion caused by listening to Hurka's story prevented Stephen from
saying more, and in two minutes he dropped off to sleep. The next day he
related to the two Indians the story of his passage through the forest.

"It was wonderful indeed that you should have alighted upon my mother's
village," Pita said. "It was not to this that the three Indians belonged,
but to another thirty miles away. Their disappearance has been the subject
of much talk. It was at first thought that they had lost their way in the
inundation and so perished, but when their canoe was discovered at the
edge of the water-mark, long after the inundation had ceased, no one could
account for it. The village was but three or four miles from the spot
where the canoe was found, and there was no possibility of their missing
their way. They could hardly have been all three devoured by wild b