cided to do so at the first
opportunity, whenever that might occur. And they believed that it might
occur at any moment, that very day, perhaps, although they were quite
prepared to find that precautions of some sort would be taken, for a
little while at least, to see that they did not get away. In this they
were not mistaken; for they had scarcely finished their meal when they
were summoned to the presence of the cacique, who informed them that he
had arranged that one of them should spend the day in hunting, while the
other should remain in the village, and, under the direction and
supervision of a member of the village council, till the gardens and
attend to the cattle of the twenty-one widows whose property they were,
and that they might settle between themselves which of the two should be
the hunter. Now this at once put an effectual stop to any plans for
immediate escape; for although not a word had passed between the two
friends on the subject, they were both of one mind that whenever they
went it must be together; in fact neither would have dreamed of going
off and leaving the other behind. Probably the shrewd old cacique had
guessed as much when he arranged the apparently simple but really
ingenious scheme whereby at least one of the two white men would always
be in the village and under close observation. Of course Dick, being
the younger, offered Phil the choice of the two occupations; and Stukely
at once unhesitatingly decided that he would undertake the agricultural
work, while Dick was to do the hunting; and this arrangement came into
force forthwith, Dick's duty being to secure all the game and fish he
possibly could, and take the products of his industry to the cacique,
who would divide them out equally between the twenty-one widows
according to the numbers of their families.

To provide flesh food enough to satisfy more than sixty healthy
appetites was no mean task, particularly in the immediate vicinity of a
village of five hundred inhabitants, where the whole of the neighbouring
country was strenuously hunted day after day; but Dick happened to be a
particularly keen and clever hunter; moreover his training during the
journey had been of such a character as to develop his speed, strength,
and endurance to such a degree that he was able to go farther afield
than any of the Indians, and thus reach a district where the game was
neither so scarce nor so wild as it was in the immediate neighbourhood
o