And Quashy, we need scarcely add, was right. He was not dead. He did not die for many years afterwards. For aught that we know, indeed, he may be living still, for he came of a very long-lived race.
His accident, however, had the useful effect of preventing his giving way to too exuberant felicity, and rendered him a little more careful as to the quantity of turtle-egg ragout which he consumed that night for supper.
It would be pleasant to end our chapter here, but a regard for facts compels us to refer to the slaughter of the unfortunate turtles next morning.
There is in the interior of the turtle a quantity of yellow fat, which is said to be superior in delicacy to the fat of the goose, and from which is obtained a fine oil, highly prized as an article of commerce. To secure this fat, the animals which had been “turned” were killed at daylight the following morning. The axes of the Indians caused the shells to fly in splinters; the intestines were then torn out and handed to the Indian women, whose duty it was to remove from them the precious fat, after which the carcasses were left to the vultures and fisher-eagles, which flocked from afar to the scene of carnage with that unerring instinct which has so often been commented on by travellers, but which no one can understand.
Chapter Eighteen.
Pedro becomes communicative; Manuela vocal; Lawrence preposterous; Quashy and Tiger violent—The Whole ending in a Grand Catastrophe.
“Senhor Armstrong,” said Pedro, the evening after that on which the capture of turtles took place, “I have received some bad news—at least unsatisfactory news—which will necessitate a change in our style of travelling, and a more rapid progress towards our journey’s end.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Lawrence answered, “for, to my mind, our style of travelling is very agreeable, and the rate quite fast enough, especially for one who has no definite purpose in view.”