1
Rob Harlow's Adventures
a Story of the Grand Chaco
CHAPTER ONE.
TWO TRAVELLERS.
"Don't they bite, sir?"
"Bite?"
Smick! smack! flap!
"Oh, murder!"
"What's the matter, sir?"
"My hand."
"Hurt it, sir?"
"I should think I have."
"You should wait till they've sucked 'emselves full and then hit 'em; they're lazy then. Too quick for you now."
"The wretches! I shall be spotted all over, like a currant dumpling. I say, Shaddy, do they always bite like this?"
"Well, yes, sir," said the man addressed, about as ugly a specimen of humanity as could be met in a day's march, for he had only one eye, and beneath that a peculiar, puckered scar extending down to the corner of his mouth, shaggy short hair, neither black nor grey--a kind of pepper-and-salt colour--yellow teeth in a very large mouth, and a skin so dark and hairy that he looked like some kind of savage, dressed in a pair of canvas trousers and a shirt that had once been scarlet, but was now stained, faded, and rubbed into a neutral grub or warm earthy tint. He wore no braces, but a kind of belt of what seemed to be snake or lizard skin, fastened with either a silver or pewter buckle. Add to this the fact that his feet were bare, his sleeves rolled up over his mahogany-coloured arms, and that his shirt was open at the throat, showing his full neck and hairy chest; add also that he was about five feet, nine, very broad-shouldered and muscular, and you have Shadrach Naylor, about the last person any one would take to be an Englishman or select for a companion