There it seemed to look back at Ralph, who did not dare attempt to kill it, lest it should attack Ben. To his horror the sailor stirred and opened his eyes drowsily. "Ben," whispered Ralph, "for goodness sake don't move, as you value your life. Do as I tell you. It--it may bite you, if you stir." Ben felt the creature as the boy had done. He lay shivering. Slowly the great insect turned and made its way from the sailor's neck to the flooring, then up the side of the boat. Ralph, seizing a rope's end, struck a furious blow, but missed. With lightning-like speed the spider ran up the side of the boat, sprang upon the water where it floated like a feather, and pushed towards shore. But Ben had seized an oar and now came down with a splash that sent a shower of spray about and momentarily blinded them both. "There! Look yonder, Ben!" cried Ralph. "Confound the luck!" The spider was swiftly crawling up the bank, where it quickly disappeared beneath a tussock. "That beats all the creatures I ever seen," said Ben. "He must be the great grandfather of all the spiders hereabout." Mr. Duff, also awakened by the noise, now suggested that it was time they were going on. While proceeding up stream Ralph related his own and Ben's experience with the spider, whereat the mate laughed heartily. "I am familiar with the species," said he. "True, they do look scary enough, but, strange to say, they are perfectly harmless. Instead of teeth, their mouth is supplied with a kind of suction apparatus by which they suck the blood from smaller insects. But they cannot bite, nor is their touch poisonous. There are other, smaller kinds of spiders about here, however, whose bite is fatal." "We were jist as bad scared as if it had been a rattlesnake," returned Ben. "I could feel me bloomin' hair turnin' gray when the thing was cocked upon me shoulder." Towards night they came to a dozen or more small huts made of palm leaves and elephant grass, from which issued a number of nearly naked blacks, who made the air hideous with shouts of welcome. Here was where they were to trade for fresh meat and vegetables--the object of their river trip. One tall savage, with a pair of bullock's horns as a head dress, and with his hair reeking with grease, coiled round the same, appeared to be the head man of the village. He wore a long red flannel shirt as an additional badge of dignity. The rest, men as well as women, wore little else but cloths about the loins. They were a jolly, sociable set though, and gave our party a hut to themselves, after supplying them with a bountiful supper of "mealies," bull beef, and a kind of bread made from ground maize and the grated buds of the cabbage palm. After that Mr. Duff and the chief began a laborious trade for meat and vegetables that lasted for an hour or more, and was carried on principally by signs and gestures. Some red blankets, beads, and cheap hand mirrors constituted the offers on the part of the mate.