emptying the
baskets almost as fast as the children filled them, and chewing until
their jaws ran blood.

Nothing was wasted. The blood was caught in pools in part of the hide,
spread like an apron on the earth, and lapped up by whoever could get
to it. The very guts were gathered up in baskets to be cooked. And
where the last little soft iron dagger had done its work, the blood had
been drunk, and the last scrap of hide bad been cut into strips, to be
chewed when the meat and its memory were things of the past, the
enormous ribs lay glistening in the moonlight like those of an
abandoned wreck, picked as clean as if the kites had done it.

"Have we done a commendable thing?" laughed Fred, looking at the
crowd's distended paunches. "There's a good bull hippo the less.
We've saved the lives for a time of several hundred gluttons. They
know neither grace nor gratitude."

But he was wrong. They did. They brought Fred a woman--their fattest,
ugliest; which means she was skin and bone and uglier than Want, also
she was more afraid of Fred than Satan is said to be of shriving. The
chief led her by the hand, she hanging back and hiding her face under
one arm (which left the rest of her nakedness unprotected). He seized
Fred's hand and put the woman's in it.

"Now you're spliced!" Brown explained. "Married to the gal forever in
presence of legal witnesses!"

Kazimoto confirmed the fearful news.

"Married in regular form an' accord with tribal custom!" Brown
continued, nodding solemnly.

"Divorce me--soon and swiftly, somebody!" Fred demanded.

We appealed to Kazimoto for information, but only threw him into a
quandary, and he proceeded to add to ours. The usual price for a
woman, it seemed, was cows--many or few according as she was lovely or
her father rich. In case of divorce, custom decreed that the cows with
their offspring should be given back. The objection to any other
property than cows changing hands to bind or loose in wedlock was that
food, for instance, when eaten was not returnable.

"Married to the gal for good an! all!"' Brown grinned, nudging Will and
me to note Fred's consternation. "You'd better stay here an' take the
chief's job when he kicks the bucket--possibly you can speed the day by
overfeedin' him!"

"Some men's luck," Will murmured, but stopped in mid-sentence, for
interruption came in the form of a weird figure, gesticulating like a
windmill, stumbling and careening through