Resting his gun in a corner of the room, he advanced to Martin's hammock.
"My boy," he exclaimed, in surprise, "what is wrong with you ?" "I'm sure I don't know," said Martin, faintly; "I think there is something wet about my feet." Turning up the sheet, he found that Martin's feet were covered with blood! For a few seconds the hermit growled forth a number of apparently very pithy sentences in Portuguese, in a deep guttural voice, which awakened Barney with a start.

Springing from his hammock with a bound like a tiger, he exclaimed, "Och! ye blackguard, would ye murther the boy before me very nose ?" and seizing the hermit in his powerful grasp, he would infallibly have hurled him, big though he was, through his own doorway, had not Martin cried out, "Stop, stop, Barney.

It's all right; he's done nothing:" on hearing which the Irishman loosened his hold, and turned towards his friend.
"What's the matter, honey ?" said Barney, in a soothing tone of voice, as a mother might address her infant son.

The hermit, whose composure had not been in the slightest degree disturbed, here said-- "The poor child has been sucked by a vampire bat." "Ochone!" groaned Barney, sitting down on the table, and looking at his host with a face of horror.
"Yes, these are the worst animals in Brazil for sucking the blood of men and cattle.

I find it quite impossible to keep my mules alive, they are so bad." Barney groaned.
"They have killed two cows which I tried to keep here, and one young horse--a foal you call him, I think; and now I have no cattle remaining, they are so bad." Barney groaned again, and the hermit went on to enumerate the wicked deeds of the vampire bats, while he applied poultices of certain herbs to Martin's toe, in order to check the bleeding, and then bandaged it up; after which he sat down to relate to his visitors the manner in which the bat carries on its bloody operations.