inches deep, and after a meal of smoked meat and parched maize prepared to sleep till dawn on the next day.
Sitting by the fire I resolved to make a first attempt to discover from Kua-kó anything concerning Rima which might be known to him. Instead of lying down when the others did I remained seated, my guardian also sitting—no doubt waiting for me to lie down first. Presently I moved nearer to him and began a conversation in a low voice, anxious not to rouse the attention of the other men.
"Once you said that Oolava would be given to me for a wife," I began. "Some day I shall want a wife."
He nodded approval, and remarked sententiously that the desire to possess a wife was common to all men.
"What has been left to me?" I said despondingly and spreading out my hands. "My pistol gone, and did I not give Runi the tinder-box, and the little box with a cock painted on it to you? I had no return—not even the blow-pipe. How, then, can I get me a wife?"
He, like the others—dull-witted savage that he was—had come to the belief that I was incapable of the cunning and duplicity they practised. I could not see a green parrot sitting silent and motionless amidst the green foliage as they could; I had not their preternatural keenness of sight; and, in like manner, to deceive with lies and false seeming was their faculty and not mine. He fell readily into the trap. My return to practical subjects pleased him. He bade me hope that Oolava might yet be mine in spite of my poverty. It was not always necessary to have things to get a wife: to be able to maintain her was enough; some day I would be like
