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The fact that it had been absurdly easy for four human prisoners in a compost pit shell to escape almost as if it were intended for them to get away and report that their captors regarded men as on a par with game birds and rabbits and porcupines. True aliens would not have bothered to give such an impression.
"Then I've something for you," said old Malachi, pulling from out of his vest a small parcel, wrapped up in thin bark, and, handing it to her; "it's a present from the Strawberry." Mary opened the bark, and found inside of it a pair of mocassins, very prettily worked in stained porcupines' quills. "Oh! how beautiful, and how kind of her! Tell her that I thank her, and love her very much.
Although averse to the diet of bush vermln, so often extolled in these colonies, and although carefully eschewing all parrot pies, red-bill ragouts, black swans, kangaroo rats, porcupines, and such vaunted nastinesses, we strongly contend for the excellence of "kangaroo steamer," as a most savory and appetizing dish.
They hit us all, and got us into a condition of mind that discounted that of the elephant under the hatch. "Besides that elephant there were stowed in that hold cages containing wolves, hyenas, wild hogs, wild asses, monkeys, porcupines, and zebras. There were three or four cages full of poisonous snakes, one variety of which I recognized, the curse of India the hooded cobra.
There were other sights on these rainy days endless processions of slipshod men on wooden clogs, clattering their way through the narrow streets, while they protected themselves from the watery downpour by flat oil-paper umbrellas; other strong-limbed men acting as wheel-horses to draw or push incredible weights of lumber; and saving themselves from the wet by bushy coats of straw that made them look like porcupines; women, little and big, carrying babies on their backs, occasionally a girl, aged anywhere from four to eight, loaded with a baby aged two; shops, shops, shops, one-storied, artistic, fantastic, with signs on which Ah Sing and Ah Tong have mingled Chinese characters and English, and which inform you that the proprietors can furnish you with the sake of Japan or the gasoline of the Standard Oil Company; these things convince you that you are in the midst of a crowded population struggling for subsistence and ready to work, a population of inexhaustible vitality and enterprise.
And they were good neighbors, all of them. Even the porcupines and the skunks were interesting in their peculiar fashion and I wish there were none worse than they in the city's slums. I have said good-by to the Glimmerglass, and it may be that I shall never again make my home by its shores. But the life of the woods goes on, and will still go on as long as man will let it.
At first the wolves came boldly forward, but the warning of the porcupines caused them to stop, and hesitate to jump for the meat. However, they were hungry, and began to leap savagely for the hams, although evidently they proved good targets for the quills of the prickly ones, for occasionally one of them would squeal and rub his nose desperately against the tree.
He would learn to see for himself how the rabbits and the partridges, the woodchucks and the weasels, the red deer, the porcupines, and all the other furtive folk who had their habitations around the tranquil shores of Silverwater, were really accustomed to behave themselves when they felt quite sure no one was looking.
And when the fire had burned low he brought in by his will great store of bark, so that the whole cave was filled, and closing the door he lighted the fuel. Then the Porcupines, who were those who had slain his wife and friend, howled for mercy, but he was deaf as a stone to their cries.
Last year some relatives of these Ibans moved to this village, and for three months the knowledge of the part played by the porcupines was hidden from them as a mysterious secret.
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