.«
    »You have seen the creature?«
    »Not with the organs of sight; but with much more infallible instruments of
vision: the conclusions of reason, and the deductions of scientific premises. I
have watched the habits of the animal, young man; and can fearlessly pronounce,
by evidence that would be thrown away on ordinary observers, that it is of vast
dimensions, inactive, possibly torpid, of voracious appetite, and, as it now
appears by the direct testimony of this venerable hunter, ferocious and
carnivorous!«
    »I should be better pleased, stranger,« said Paul, on whom the Doctor's
description was making a very sensible impression, »to be sure the creature was
a beast at all.«
    »As to that, if I wanted evidence of a fact, which is abundantly apparent by
the habits of the animal, I have the word of Ishmael, himself. A reason can be
given for my smallest deductions. I am not troubled, young man, with a vulgar
and idle curiosity, but all my aspirations after knowledge, as I humbly believe,
are, first, for the advancement of learning, and secondly, for the benefit of my
fellow-creatures. I pined greatly in secret to know the contents of the tent,
which Ishmael guarded so carefully, and which he had covenanted that I should
swear, (jurare per deos) not to approach nigher than a defined number of cubits,
for a definite period of time. Your jusjurandum, or oath, is a serious matter,
and not to be dealt in lightly; but, as my expedition depended on complying, I
consented to the act, reserving to myself at all times the power of distant
observation. It is now some ten days since Ishmael, pitying the state in which
he saw me, a humble lover of science, imparted the fact that the vehicle
contained a beast, which he was carrying into the Prairies as a decoy, by which
he intends to entrap others of the same genus, or perhaps species. Since then my
task, has been reduced simply to watch the habits of the animal, and to record
the results. When we reach a certain distance where these beasts are said to
abound, I am to have the liberal examination of the specimen.«
    Paul continued to listen, in the most profound silence, until the Doctor
concluded his singular but characteristic explanation; then the incredulous
bee-hunter shook his head, and saw fit to reply, by saying -
    »Stranger, old Ishmael has burrowed you in the very bottom of a hollow tree,