MARTIN RATTLER. 173

damaged. However, it was better than nothing, so
they slung their hammocks under it, kindled a fire,
and prepared supper. While they were busy dis-
cussing this meal, a few dark and ominous clouds
gathered in the sky, and the old trader, glancing un-
easily about him, gave them to understand that he
feared the rainy season was going to begin.

“Well, then,” said Barney, lighting his pipe and
stretching himself at full length in his hammock,
with a leg swinging to and fro over one side and his
head leaning over the other, as was his wont when
he felt particularly comfortable in mind and body—
“well then, avic, let it begin. If we're sure to have
it anyhow, the sooner it begins the better, to my
thinkin’.”

“JT don’t know that,” said Martin, who was seated
on a large stone beside the fire sipping a can of coffee,
which he shared equally with Marmoset. The monkey
sat on his shoulder gazing anxiously into his face,
with an expression that seemed as if the creature were
mentally exclaiming, “Now me, now you; now me,
now you,” during the whole process. “It would be
better, I think, if we were in a more sheltered posi-
tion before it begins. Ha! there it comes though, in
earnest.”

A smart shower began to fall as he spoke, and