Whether in answer to this challenge or to some other irritant, the animal slowly opened one eye and ponderously let it fall shut again in what, to the heated imagination of the Maestro, seemed a patronizing wink. Its head slid quietly along the water; puffs of ooze rose from below and spread on the surface. Then, in the silence there rose a significant sound--a soft, repeated snapping of the tongue: "Cluck, cluck." "Aha!" shouted the Maestro triumphantly to his invisible audience. "I know where you are, you scamp; right behind the caribao; come out of there, _pronto, dale-dale_!" But his enthusiasm was of short duration. To the commanding tongue-click the caribao had stopped dead-still, and a silence heavy with defiance met the too-soon exultant cries. An insect in the foliage began a creaking call, and then all the creatures of humidity hidden there among this fermenting vegetation joined in mocking chorus. The Maestro felt a vague blush welling up from the innermost recesses of his being. "I'm going to get that kid," he muttered darkly, "if I have to wait till--the coming of Common Sense to the Manila office! By gum, he's the Struggle for Attendance personified!" He sat down on the bank and waited. This did not prove interesting. The animals of the ditch creaked on; the caribao bubbled up the water with his deep content; above, the abandoned kite went through strange acrobatics and wailed as if in pain. The Maestro dipped his hand into the water; it was lukewarm. "No hope of a freeze-out," he murmured pensively. Behind, the pony began to pull at the reins. "Yes, little horse, I'm tired, too. Well," he said apologetically, "I hate to get energetic, but there are circumstances which----" The end of his sentence was lost, for he had whisked out the big Colt's dissuader of ladrones, that hung on his belt, and was firing. The six shots went off like a bunch of fire-crackers, but far from at random, for a regular circle boiled up around the dozing caribao. The disturbed animal snorted, and again a discreet "cluck-cluck" rose in the sudden, astounded silence. "This," said the Maestro, as he calmly introduced fresh cartridges into the chambers of his smoking weapon, "is what might be called an application of western solutions to eastern difficulties." Again he brought his revolver down, but he raised it without shooting and replaced it in its holster. From beneath the caribao's rotund belly, below the surface, an indistinct form shot out; cleaving the water like a polliwog it glided for the bank, and then a black, round head emerged at the feet of the Maestro. "All right, bub; we'll go to school now," said the latter, nodding to the dripping figure as it rose before him. He lifted the sullen brownie and straddled him forward of the saddle, then proceeded to mount himself, when the Capture began to display marked agitation. He squirmed and twisted, turned his head back and up, and finally a grunt escaped him. "El volador."