were
still blackened, and appeared to have been scorched. The whole camp now
pressed on him, their wonder and interest rising to a great height. With
some trouble Felix described his journey over the site of the ancient
city, interrupted with constant exclamations, questions, and excited
conversation. He told them everything, except about the diamond.

Their manner towards him perceptibly altered. From the first they had
been hospitable; they now became respectful, and even reverent. The
elders and their chief, not to be distinguished by dress or ornament
from the rest, treated him with ceremony and marked deference. The
children were brought to see and even to touch him. So great was their
amazement that any one should have escaped from these pestilential
vapours, that they attributed it to divine interposition, and looked
upon him with some of the awe of superstition. He was asked to stay with
them altogether, and to take command of the tribe.

The latter Felix declined; to stay with them for awhile, at least, he
was, of course, willing enough. He mentioned his hidden possessions, and
got up to return for them, but they would not permit him. Two men
started at once. He gave them the bearings of the spot, and they had not
the least doubt but that they should find it, especially as, the wind
being still, the canoe would not yet have broken up, and would guide
them. The tribe remained in the green coombe the whole day, resting from
their long journey. They wearied Felix with questions, still he answered
them as copiously as he could; he felt too grateful for their kindness
not to satisfy them. His bow was handled, his arrows carried about so
that the quiver for the time was empty, and the arrows scattered in
twenty hands. He astonished them by exhibiting his skill with the
weapon, striking a tree with an arrow at nearly three hundred yards.

Though familiar, of course, with the bow, they had never seen shooting
like that, nor, indeed, any archery except at short quarters. They had
no other arms themselves but spears and knives. Seeing one of the women
cutting the boughs from a fallen tree, dead and dry, and, therefore,
preferable for fuel, Felix naturally went to help her, and, taking the
axe, soon made a bundle, which he carried for her. It was his duty as a
noble to see than no woman, not a slave, laboured; he had been bred in
that idea, and would have felt disgraced had he permitted it. The women
looked on with asto