Bah! you brute!' cried Bill, in disgust, giving the reptile a kick on the snout with his heavy boot, that sent it sweltering back in agony into its loathsome pool.

I thought it lucky for Bill, indeed for all of us, that the native youth's back happened to be turned at the time, for I am certain that if the poor savages had come to know that we had so rudely handled their god, we should have had to fight our way back to the ship.

As we retraced our steps I questioned my companion further on this subject.
"How comes it, Bill, that the mothers allow such a dreadful thing to be done ?" "Allow it?
the mothers _do_ it! It seems to me that there's nothing too fiendish or diabolical for these people to do.

Why, in some of the islands they have an institution called the _Areoi_, and the persons connected with that body are ready for any wickedness that mortal man can devise.

In fact they stick at nothing; and one o' their customs is to murder their infants the moment they are born.