32 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
reasonable scheme of earthly things he filled the 
niche of a giant green tree-frog, and one of us 
seemed to remember that the Knight Gawain was 
enamored of green, and so we dubbed him. For 
the hours of daylight Gawain preferred the réle 
of a hunched-up pebble of malachite; or if he 
could find a leaf, he drew eighteen purple vacuum 
toes beneath him, veiled his eyes with opalescent 
lids, and slipped from the mineral to the vege- 
table kingdom, flattened by masterly shading 
which filled the hollows and leveled the bumps; 
and the leaf became more of a leaf than it had 
been before Gawain was merged with it. 
Night, or hunger, or the merciless tearing of 
sleep from his soul wrought magic and trans- 
formed him into a glowing, jeweled specter. He 
sprouted toes and long legs; he rose and inflated 
his sleek emerald frog-form; his sides blazed forth 
a mother-of-pearl waist-coat—a myriad mosaics 
of pink and blue and salmon and mauve; ana 
from nowhere if not from the very depths of his 
throat, there slowly rose twin globes,—great eyes, 
—which stood above the flatness of his head, as 
mosques above an oriental city. Gone were the 
neutralizing lids, and in their place, strange up- 
right pupils surrounded with vermilion lines and 
