Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/28

  avacado, had a pulp like wax, or bone-marrow, which was greasy to the touch, oily, and held a faint flavor of sandal-wood. At first we tried it with caution, for our native friends would not eat anything which grew in the shadow of the Malang-o-mor; neither would they sleep in the narrow valley, but retired each evening to the edge of the forest on the farther slope.

"We rested and we slept, and we ate of the fruit, which I called myela, because I did not think that it had ever been described, and I called it so from its resemblance to marrow; also, we drank of the stream, which was a deep ruby, spring-cooled and fragrant, but of which none of the Papuans would drink excepting the girl, Tomba, given to MacFarlane by the chief. She ate and drank and shuddered and watched her lord narrowly, as if waiting for the curse to fall and wishful to avert it.

"In the early morning we hunted the game or clicked with our little hammers on the [ 12 ]