e had ceased to fear the
Indians, believing as we did that they were now far behind.

Then I began to think once more of how much better off I should have
been if I had settled down to work on my uncle's plantation.

Not much, I was obliged to own, for my settling down would not have
saved me from quarrelling with Garcia, neither would it have cleared my
uncle from the incumbrance upon his home.

"Perhaps things are best as they are," I said; and then I looked back to
where Lilla was thoughtfully gazing down into the river from where she
reclined upon the raft, and letting one of her hands hang down in the
water, which she played with and splashed from time to time.

I was just going to warn her not to do so, for I remembered having read
or heard tell that alligators would sometimes make a snap at a hand
dragging in the water like that, when she uttered a sharp cry, snatching
her hand away; and as she did so I saw a little flash, as if a tiny,
silvery fish, dropped back into the water.

"What is it?" I said.

"Something bit me--a little fish," she said. "It has nipped a morsel
out of my finger."

She held up her hand as she spoke before wrapping a scrap of linen round
it, and I could see that it was bleeding freely.

"Surely it could not have been that tiny fish," I said, thrusting one
hand into the water and snatching it back again, for as it passed
beneath the surface it was as if it had been pinched in half a dozen
places at once; and when I thrust it in again I could see that the water
was alive with little fish apparently about a couple of inches long, and
instantaneously they made a rush at my hand, fastening upon it
everywhere, so that it needed a sharp shake to throw them off; and when
I drew it out, hardened and tough as it was with my late rough work, it
was bleeding in a dozen places.

"Why, the little wretches!" I exclaimed; and by way of experiment I
held a piece of leather over the side, to find that it was attacked
furiously; while even later on, when I had been fishing and had caught a
small kind of mud-carp, I hauled it behind the canoe, in a few minutes
there was nothing left but the head--the little ravenous creatures
having literally devoured it all but the stronger bones.

I remember thinking how unpleasant it would be to bathe there, and often
and often afterwards we found that it would be absolutely impossible to
dip our hands beneath the water unless we wished to withdraw them
smar