THE DEVOTION OF THOMAS NED. 187 



have to eat, but what we should have different from 

 the day before ! 



My stores were scanty, as I have ah^eady men- 

 tioned, before he invaded my premises; but there 

 was no diminution in them after his arrival ; on the 

 contrary, they positively increased. The flour was 

 low in the barrel, but he augmented it by farine 

 from the cassava root ; he hunted out the wild yam 

 and the yeddo, and knew to a day the ripening of the 

 tubers under ground, no matter how they were con- 

 cealed from human perception ; he grated the cocoa- 

 nut, and made from its meat delicious pies and pud- 

 dings ; he walked the beach for turtles, and we feasted 

 on eggs and turtle steaks until that variety of food 

 palled upon us ; he knew the best spots on the rocks 

 from which to cast his line for fish ; the holes in the 

 stream where lurked the fattest crayfish, and the holes 

 in the earth in which lived the finest land crabs ; in 

 short, he taught me that the earth could be made to 

 yield a fatness of which I had never dreamed. 



And Thomas Ned knew many things also which 

 I did not. For instance, he knew how to lull the 

 fierce-looking iguana to sleep and capture him. When 

 he told me this I was at first incredulous, but he 

 proved his statement by doing it. 



We found a big iguana, one day, feeding on the 

 leaves of a mangrove tree. When the animal saw us 

 coming it swelled out its gular sack, raised the spines 

 along its back, and looked fiercer than ever. But 

 Thomas Ned began whistling a tune, at the same 

 time cutting down a " lialine " vine, with whicli he 



