"Once I ate the little berries that grow on the sticks that cause the fire——"
"Matches," suggested Sa'-zada.
"Perhaps; I thought they were berries. Many pains! but I was sick, and my kind Master saved my life with cocoanut oil."
"Magh knows something of that matter," declared Sa'-zada; "when she first came here she ate her straw bedding and it nearly killed her."
"A fine record these Jungle People have," sneered Pardus. "I, who claim not to be wise like the Men, have sense enough to stick to my meat."
"But Magh was wise," asserted Sa'-zada, "for if she had not helped us in every way when we were trying to save her life she would surely have died."
"In my Master's house," said Oungea, "was one of their young, a Babe; and whenever I got loose, for they took to tying me up, I made straight for his bed, borrowed his bottle of milk—there surely was no harm in that, for we were babes together—and scuttled up a tree where I could drink the milk in peace. When I dropped the bottle down so that they might get it, it always broke, and I think it was because of this mischief that they whipped me."
"Well," said Sa'-zada, "we were to have learned to-night why the Bandar-log were Men of the Jungle, first cousins to the Men-kind; but all I remember is that they ate matches and straw and got very sick. For my part I am very sleepy."
"If you are tired, I will carry you, Hanuman," lisped Python, shoving his ugly fat head forward.