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CHAPTER XXII


A FRIEND IN NEED


Walter had been lying where he fell for over an hour when two young natives, chancing to go up the hill for firewood, discovered his body and went screaming back to their hut, to tell the news to their mother.

"An Americano!" they cried, in their peculiar dialect. "An American, and he looks as if he was dead!"

The announcement aroused the whole of the sleepy village, and soon a party of two women and two old men followed the children up the hill. The young men of the place were all at the front or marching to get there.

"An Americano truly," said one of the old men. "And he is not dead."

"Then what ails him?" asked the other old man, as he shook the young sailor. "He does not seem to be wounded, either."

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