Chap. IY. 
BIVOUAC OK THE SANDS. 
297 
^ place luckily free from mosquitoes. The different por- 
tions of the party made arched coverings with the 
toldos or maranta-leaf awnings of their canoes to sleep 
under, fixing the edges in the sand. No one, however, 
seemed inclined to go to sleep, so after supper we all 
sat or lay around the large fires and amused our- 
selves. We had the fiddler with us, and in the in- 
tervals between the wretched tunes which he played, 
the usual amusement of story-telling beguiled the time : 
tales of hair-breadth escapes from jaguar, alligator, and 
so forth. There were amongst us a father and son who 
had been the actors, the previous year, in an alligator 
adventure on the edge of the praia we had just left. 
The son, whilst bathing, was seized by the thigh and 
carried under water : a cry was raised, and the father, 
rushing down the bank, plunged after the rapacious 
beast which was diving away with his victim. It 
seems almost incredible that a man could overtake 
and master the large cayman in his own element ; but 
such was the case in this instance, for the animal was 
reached and forced to release his booty by the man's 
thrusting his thumb into his eye. The lad showed us 
the marks of the alligator s teeth in his thighs. We 
sat up until past midnight listening to these stories 
and assisting the flow of talk by frequent potations of 
burnt rum. A large shallow dish was filled with the 
liquor and fired : when it had burnt for a few minutes 
the flame was extinguished and each one helped him- 
self by dipping a tea-cup into the vessel. 
One by one the people dropped asleep, and then the 
quiet murmur of talk of the few who remained awake was 
