MARTIN RATTLER. 83

“ Ochone!” groaned Barney, sitting down on the
table, and looking at his host with a face of
horror.

“Yes, these are the worst animals in Brazil for
sucking the blood of men and cattle. I find it quite
impossible to keep my mules alive, they are so
bad.”

Barney groaned.

“They have killed two cows which I tried to keep
here, and one young horse—a foal you call him, I
think ; and now I have no cattle remaining, they are
so bad.”

Barney groaned again, and the hermit went on to
enumerate the wicked deeds of the vampire bats, while
he applied poultices of certain herbs to Martin’s toe,
in order to check the bleeding, and then bandaged it
up; after which he sat down to relate to his visitors
the manner in which the bat carries on its bloody
operations. He explained, first of all, that the vam-
pire bats are so large and ferocious that they often
kill horses and cattle by sucking their blood out. Of
course they cannot do this at one meal, but they
attack the poor animals again and again, and the
blood continues to flow from the wounds they make
long afterwards, so that the creatures attacked soon

grow weak and die. They attack men, too, as Martin