ed
up into our nests, and were soon asleep. I was awoke by the wheezing
and coughing of the asthmatic old horse, and, looking up, I saw what
appeared to me an extraordinary phenomenon. Suddenly the air around us
was filled with bright sparkles of light. Now they flashed on one side,
now on the other; now the whole space above our heads was illuminated;
then all was darkness; then the lights--thousands of them there appeared
to be--burst forth once again, more brilliantly than ever. I could not
help rousing up Manby, to ask him what he thought about the matter.

"The matter, Hurry!" he answered, yawning; "why, that our stable stands
in a particularly damp situation, and that the place is full of
fire-flies. You'll hear frogs croaking before long, and see great big
water-snakes crawling about, and reptiles of all sorts. The snakes,
they tell me, are harmless; but it is not pleasant to awake and find one
encircling one's neck. However, we shall soon get accustomed to them,
so people say, and that's a comfort. I don't know whether it is
pleasanter to be asleep or awake. Just now, when you roused me up, I
was dreaming that I was a horse, and that ugly copper-skinned landlord
of ours was trying to put a saddle on my back to take a long ride, but I
would not let him, and so he was thrashing me unmercifully. I dare say
he would treat his beast much in the same way if left to himself."

"Do not let us be talking of our dreams. Our waking thoughts are
sufficiently unpleasant," I observed.

After a time we managed to go to sleep again, but for some weeks
scarcely a night passed without our being disturbed by unusual noises or
by the visits of snakes or reptiles of some sort. Once we were invaded
by a whole army of land-crabs, which were passing across the island, and
it was some time before we could persuade them to turn aside from our
door. Many paid the penalty of their temerity with their lives, and
were cooked next morning for breakfast. By-the-bye, in the cooking
department we were at first sadly deficient, but from the instruction we
received from some of our French masters, we soon became great adepts in
the art, and were independent of any help. One reason why we did not
succeed at first was the scanty supply of food with which we were
furnished. The Frenchmen, however, showed us where we might go out into
the woods near the village, and gather vegetables and roots and nuts of
all sorts for ourselves. Af