summoned us with a bay that he never wasted on small game. We had seen tapir-tracks near the shore, and the boys entered the cane-brake at a

THE JAGUAR MEETS AN UNEXPECTED ENEMY.

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'Hurry up!" cried an Indian boy, who had followed us from the road. "Here comes the old one -look out!" and almost at the same moment we heard our dog rushing through the thicket, with a howl of terror, straight toward the river, as it seemed, for, in the next minute, a double splash told us that pursued and pursuer had taken to the water.

Before gunpowder was invented, hunters were sometimes obliged to "run down" their game, and I have often wondered how they could manage it, for imminent danger seems almost to double the swiftness of a fugitive animal.

Rough was by no means a good swimmer, but, when we reached the shore, we saw him dash through the water like a fish-otter, -not the least bit too quick, though, for the jaguar was close at his heels, and, to our consternation, the only gun we had brought along missed fire, and there was no time to run back to the road. We gave up the dog for lost, as we saw him make an ineffectual attempt to land on a swampy reed-bank, while the pursuer prepared to intercept his retreat. All at once, however, the jaguar turned swiftly, and, with a scream of rage, struck out to

"Come here, quick!" cried Tommy, from the thicket. "It's worth while-two young pumas or panthers, I don't know which."

"What is it, Menito?" I called out.

"I can't tell," he replied. "They do not look like pumas; they must be jaguars; but it 's worth while. They are pretty big fellows, and this gives us a chance to try our catch-net. Rough has treed them where they can't get away!"

The cubs or kittens had taken refuge on a little plum-tree, and they received us with hissing growls; but our catch-net was just the thing for customers of that sort; it was shaped like a butterfly-catcher, but with a larger hoop, and instead of gauze, the net-work was made of strong and elastic cords.

While we watched the tree, Menito fastened the net to a pole, and, seeing him come, the kittens seemed to take a sudden dislike to their perch; but they were too late. One we caught in the act of jumping off, and the other was kept at bay until we had time to attend to him. All their tricks were in vain; when they had satisfied themselves that the net could not be broken, we pinned them to the ground with forked sticks, and, putting on a pair of buckskin mittens, Menito secured them without endangering his skin, although they worked their claws with desperate energy.

the water suggested the explanation of his maneuver. Some monster of the river-deep-a shark or a gavial-had seized him from below, little knowing that its sharp teeth would save the life of another fellow-creature. The jaguar struck out for the lower end of the island, and had just strength enough left to drag himself into the reeds, while Rough paddled back to the shore, and, without waiting to shake himself, raced around us in a very frenzy of joy that he had reached the land unscathed.

"Will you let me carry that gun of yours, please?" asked the little Indian lad, when we got back to the road. "What do you

"Never mind, sonny," said I. want to carry it for?"

"I want to earn a quarter of a dollar," said he, "to buy a picture of my patron-saint, so that I can go to heaven, where they make butter-tortillas [a sort of pancakes]. Butter makes them much mellower, you know; my mother always fries them with fish-oil."

"All right," I laughed. "I will give you half a dollar if you will show us the way to San Tomas, and hunt up a good river-pilot. Do you think you could find one?"

"Por mi fé sagrada [on my sacred word], sir, I'll do that," said the little fellow. "Just come

along," and he rushed ahead, almost beside himself with excitement, and, when we finally sighted our destination on the ridge of a treeless bluff, he pointed out the missionary's house, and then ran down to the river to fulfill the second part of his contract.

The kind friar took us to a store where we could buy all the provisions we wanted, and then sent a special messenger to the river, as our little guide had not yet returned. After an hour or so, they both came back, the boy crying as if his heart would break, and the messenger very sorry, as he said, to inform us that all the falucas, or sail-boats, excepting one, had been hired by a merchant to go up the river with a cargo of flour, and the one going down had started the evening before with a load of dye-wood.

"Whose is it? Who shipped the dye-wood?" asked the friar.

"Moro, the Mil Negocios [Jack-at-all-trades], as they call him," said the messenger.

"Oh, you are all right, then, after all," said the friar. "I know him; he always stops a day or

in your place, I should try to get something better than fish-cakes. Yes, run and tell the old man to wait for us."

That seemed really the best plan, and as Cañamo was only twelve English miles from the Mission, we decided to go down that same evening and sleep on board of the faluca, in the open river, where the mosquitoes would not bother us so much.

Master Moro, the Jack-at-all-trades, proved to be a quadroon from the West Indian Islands, and the appearance of his faluca seemed to justify his by-name. His cabin was a "variety store" of dry-goods and hardware; on the forecastle he had a shoe-maker's shop of his own, and in the caboose an assortment of all kinds of fishing-tackle and harpoons.

Of his skill in the use of the harpoon, he gave us a proof the next morning, when a school of manatees came puffing up the river. Before they reached us, he slackened his tiller-ropes to muffle the rushing of the keel water, and when they passed us, though still at a distance of thirty yards,

more noise than that one manatee. It struck out left and right with its clumsy tail, and spattered us with such showers of water that it would soon have turned the joke against us, if the skipper had not hauled it alongside and finished it with a few blows of a heavy oar.

It weighed at least three hundred pounds, and we could have bought it for as many cents, but we had no room for pets of that sort, so the Moro lugged it to the next landing and sold it to the natives for a car-load of bananas.

River-dolphins, too, were following us in shoals, though with all the discretion of their salt-water relatives, to whom the ancient Greeks ascribed a more than human sagacity. They followed in our wake, and played all around us in wanton mirth, but always just out of reach of the skipper's harpoon, and their merry gambols were so entertaining that we should have thought it a shame to shoot them.

"You were talking about tapirs, last night," said the skipper, when our boat skirted the swampbelt of the southern shore. "There is one, now, in that bog ahead there; not a large one, though; it's a 'squealer,' as we call them, about half-grown." 'Why, that's just what we want!" cried Tommy. "Oh, don't!" he added, when the Moro reached for his harpoon. "Could n't we manage to get it alive?"

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"I believe we could," said the skipper. "Just keep quiet a moment. It will take its time about wading that bog, if we don't scare it. We might contrive to catch it in the water, or with my lariat if it gets ashore."

The bog was on a little island near the shore, and was surrounded by a brake of matted bulrushes that concealed us until we almost intercepted the retreat of our game; for, just when the squealer took to the water, the Moro ran his boat alongside, and, swinging up his oar, dealt it a stunning whack over the head—a death-blow it would have been to any less thick-skulled animal. Even the tapir staggered, as it attempted to land, and we hoped the skipper would catch it in the water. Rowing through tangled reeds is hard work, though, and when we finally gained the strand at the foot of a ravine, the tapir had already landed and struggled up the steep bank. "It's stunned; it can not get away!" cried the Moro, as he leaped ashore, lariat in hand. "Quick, now-let 's head it off, before it gets up to the top of that bluff!

While we ran up the ravine, Menito scaled the rock like a cat, and reached the top in time to drive the tapir to the left, where the Moro soon

overtook it with his lariat. The second throw hit it over the head, but a tapir has hardly any neck at all, and, making a sudden rush, the squealer had already slipped the rope over its breast and shoulders, when the Moro pulled back, and the rope tightened around the tapir's body. The animal was far too strong for one man to hold, and it soon would have broken away, if we had not caught the rope in time-Tommy and I first, and Menito at the slippery end, where he had to twist in his handkerchief to get a good grip, for the tapir was now running down-hill toward a swampy creek on the other side of the bluff.

"Hold him! Hold him, boys!" yelled the Moro, and we all tried our best, but so did the squealer, and it soon proved to be the best boy in the crowd. Having now recovered from the effects of the blow, it fairly ran away with us all, although I dug my heels into the ground and braced myself with all my might.

"Tengala-hitch it-hitch the rope!" cried the skipper; but that was easier said than done. Not a tree nor a bush was in sight, and the loose rocks rolled down-hill as soon as we touched them, and, to make matters worse, Menito suddenly let go, being quite out of breath with laughing. The Moro slipped, and, stumbling backward, knocked the rope out of my hand, and poor Tommy alone was unable to stem the tide of defeat. In spite of Rough's barking, and the dreadful imprecations of the skipper, the squealer now redoubled its speed until it rushed headlong into the swamps below. A splash-and Tommy lay prostrate on his back, while away went our tapir at top speed, Menito's handkerchief fluttering in the rear like a pilot-flag. Menito was almost choked with laughing, and the affair was really too ludicrous to scold about it, although the skipper insisted that we must pay him for his lost lariat.

"It was all Menito's fault," said he; "his laughing and hooting would have scared a saint, not to mention a squealer."

On our return to the boat, we found that the little jaguars had broken jail and taken refuge on the back of our old mule, whose efforts to break the halter had almost dislocated her neck. Daddy Simon was at his wit's end; he had no right to let our pets escape, but whenever he approached them with the catch-net, their antics threw the mule into a new fit of terror. The skipper, however, cut matters short by slipping his hawser, and driving the cubs overboard when our boat was in deep water, where we soon caught them with nets and poles.