Burly Bill would be in charge of boats and all, and in the evenings he would enter the children's cabin to sing them songs and tell them strange, weird tales of forest life.
He had a banjo, and right sweetly could he play. Old Beeboo the Indian, would invariably light his meerschaum for him, smoking it herself for a good five minutes first and foremost, under pretence of getting it well alight.
Beeboo, indeed, was altogether a character. Both Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair liked her very much, however, for she had been in the family, and nursed both Peggy and Roland, from the day they had first come to the country. As for her age, she might have been any age between five-and-twenty and one hundred and ten. She was dark in skin--oh, no! not black, but more of copper colour, and showed a few wrinkles at early morn. But when Beeboo was figged out in her nicest white frock and her deep-blue or crimson blouse, with her hair hanging down in two huge plaits, then, with the smile that always hovered around her lips and went dancing away up her face till it flickered about her eyes, she was very pleasant indeed. The wrinkles had all flown up to the moon or somewhere, and Beeboo was five-and-twenty once again.
I must tell you something, however, regarding her, and that is the worst. Beeboo came from a race of cannibals who inhabit one of the wildest and almost inaccessible regions of Bolivia, and her teeth had been filed by flints into a triangular shape, the form best adapted for tearing flesh. She had been brought thence, along with a couple of wonderful monkeys and several parrots, when only sixteen, by an English traveller who had intended to make her a present to his wife.
Beeboo never got as far as England, however. She had watched her chance, and one day escaped to the woods, taking with her one of the monkeys, who was an especial favourite with this strange, wild girl.
She was frequently seen for many years after this. It was supposed she had lived on roots and rats--I'm not joking--and slept at night in trees. She managed to clothe herself, too, with the inner rind of the bark of certain shrubs. But how she had escaped death from the talons of jaguars and other wild beasts no one could imagine.
Well, one day, shortly after the arrival of St. Clair, hunters found the jaguar queen, as they called her, lying in the jungle at the foot of a tree.
There was a jaguar not far off, and a huge piece of sodden flesh lay near Beeboo's cheek, undoubtedly placed there by this strange, wild pet, while close beside her stood a tapir.
Beeboo was carried to the nearest village, and the tapir followed as gently as a lamb. My informant does not know what became of the tapir, but Beeboo was tamed, turned a Christian too, and never evinced any inclination to return to the woods.
Yet, strangely enough, no puma nor jaguar would ever even growl or snarl at Beeboo.