Besides, it is capital eating, tasting just like a chicken, and that of the tenderest: you could not tell the difference between the two when well cooked.
Catching up a thick stick, I was after Pompey in a minute, forgetting alike the heat of the sun's rays in the open--although but a short period before I had been forced to retreat under the shade of the verandah--and my anxious watch for Jake with news of the mail steamer, about whose delay I had been so impatient.
I soon overtook the darkey, who never could make much headway in his boots.

They were so big for him that I believe his feet used to have a quiet walk inside them on their own account! "Where's the 'guana ?" I said.
"Just dere, Mass' Tom," he replied, pointing with one of his lean, bony, mottled fingers, the black colour of which seemed to have been worked off them by years of rough usage.
"Where ?" I repeated, for I could not see the animal as yet anywhere.
"Dere, on manure heap--see ?" "Yes, I see now," I replied, as, getting nearer to the stables, I noticed something on the top of a mound of straw rubbish.

It was a creature like a gigantic lizard, some five or six feet long and as broad about the head as a decent-sized pig.
"Yah, yah, dere he is, dere he is!" shouted out Pompey.

"Golly, Mass' Tom, he am big 'guana, too! Give me de 'tick, and dis niggah will soon 'top um runnin' 'way." The green-looking creature had been basking in the sun, enjoying itself all the more, probably, from the warmth of the manure heap on which it lay; but now, on our nearer approach, it raised its serpent-like head and, puffing out its creamy throat, grew in an instant to double its former size, while the beautiful iridescent colouring of its skin became more conspicuous.
Pompey raised the stick I had handed to him, and the iguana, as if likewise springing to arms to resist attack, elevated a sort of spiny fringe, resembling a mane, that reached from the crest of its head to the shoulders.

At the same time, it slung round its tail, in crocodile fashion, as if to give a blow with it to its assailant.
The old darkey, however, was not frightened at the motion.