. Over the bed of the streams ran a liquid substance
without any appearance of limpidity, streaked with distinct veins,
which did not reunite by immediate cohesion when they were parted by
the blade of a knife!

Klock-Klock, which we are obliged to describe as the chief
"town" of the island, consisted of wretched huts entirely formed
of black skins; it possessed domestic animals resembling the common
pig, a sort of sheep with a black fleece, twenty kinds of fowls,
tame albatross, ducks, and large turtles in great numbers.

On arriving at Klock-Klock, Captain William Guy and his companions
found a population--which Arthur Pym estimated at ten thousand
souls, men, women, and children--if not to be feared, at least to
be kept at a distance, so noisy and demonstrative were they.
Finally, after a long halt at the hut of Too-Wit, the strangers
returned to the shore, where the "beche-de-mer"--the favourite
food of the Chinese--would provide enormous cargoes; for the
succulent mollusk is more abundant there than in any other part of
the austral regions.

Captain William Guy immediately endeavoured to come to an
understanding with Too-Wit on this matter, requesting him to
authorize the construction of sheds in which some of the men of the
_Jane_ might prepare the beche-de-mer, while the schooner should hold
on her course towards the Pole. Too-Wit accepted this proposal
willingly, and made a bargain by which the natives were to give
their labour in the gathering-in of the precious mollusk.

At the end of a month, the sheds being finished, three men were told
off to remain at Tsalal. The natives had not given the strangers
cause to entertain the slightest suspicion of them. Before leaving
the place, Captain William Guy wished to return once more to the
village of Klock-Klock, having, from prudent motives, left six men
on board, the guns charged, the bulwark nettings in their place, the
anchor hanging at the forepeak--in a word, all in readiness to
oppose an approach of the natives. Too-Wit, escorted by a hundred
warriors, came out to meet the visitors. Captain William Guy and his
men, although the place was propitious to an ambuscade, walked in
close order, each pressing upon the other. On the right, a little in
advance, were Arthur Pym, Dirk Peters, and a sailor named Allen.
Having reached a spot where a fissure traversed the hillside, Arthur
Pym turned into it in order to gather some hazel nuts which hung in
clusters upon