Manchurian Books

CHAPTER II
ROBBER AND ROBBED
TORRES SLEPT for about half an hour, and then there was a noise among
the trees--a sound of light footsteps, as though some visitor was
walking with naked feet, and taking all the precaution he could lest
he should be heard. To have put himself on guard against any
suspicious approach would have been the first care of our adventurer
had his eyes been open at the time. But he had not then awoke, and
what advanced was able to arrive in his presence, at ten paces from
the tree, without being perceived.
It was not a man at all, it was a "guariba."
Of all the prehensile-tailed monkeys which haunt the forests of the
Upper Amazon--graceful sahuis, horned sapajous, gray-coated monos,
sagouins which seem to wear a mask on their grimacing faces--the
guariba is without doubt the most eccentric. Of sociable disposition,
and not very savage, differing therein very greatly from the mucura,
who is as ferocious as he is foul, he delights in company, and
generally travels in troops.


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