Mr. Welson suggestingly asked, if the river Indians, or in more truthful expression, the reptile savages, would not avail themselves of this open invitation to wreak their poisonous vengeance? To which Correliana smilingly replied: “Our benefactors have informed me that the river Indians, when in dismayed flight from their repulse, met the old chief who had been retained as a prisoner on board of the _Tortuga_. Holding them in check while he described the power you had exercised over him, and one of your own kind, he urged that any further attempt against the city would result as in the battle they had just fought. His collar investment was, in their panic, a sufficient verification of authority, and although a victim to your sorceries they proclaimed him an embogator, or prophet itinerator of the tribes. His description of the effects you produced upon him, conjoined with the padre’s fears, has established your reputation as a magician capable of filling their bodies with tormenting scrouls, or demons; this increased their panic, causing the tribe to disperse in all haste to their swamp feudalities. We are fully assured from the Betongese recital,—and they are not altogether free from the fear you have inspired,—that your presence will prove ample security for their absence from the highland valleys, as well as a protection to the _Tortuga_ on her downward passage. In pledge of their fidelity, the Betongese have volunteered an escort for the Kyronese remaining at the anchorage of the _Tortuga_.” After the chiefs had partaken of food prepared by the Kyronese matrons, they were escorted without the cinctus gates, by all within the city able to walk. When the gate keepers, Jack and Bill, were notified that from thenceforward the gates were to be left unclosed, they fired a salvo of a single discharge, then limbering up the howitzer stowed it, with munitions, in the keep of the gate tower; but asked permission to retain their quarters, with the more than probable inducement of having their rations brought and dispensed by two Kyronese maidens, with whom they had been on “signal” terms from the day of their rescue. Cleorita, after the Indians’ departure, expressed to Correliana the hope that her grandfather had not been by her judged over-presuming in caring for the wounded Indians, or bold in assuming the responsibility of introducing the Indian chiefs into the city? “For with truth, he says,”—she urged, “he would not have hazarded the venture, if he had not felt certain that they were trustworthy. Indeed we have seen many worse who have been grateful for kindness!”