better came into view. I wondered all the time if some of the unseen things that coiled round my legs and held me were not snakes instead of rope-like creepers—for, of course, snakes swarm in such a place—but one had just to risk it. The beauty and silence of the place was almost unearthly, and there was something solemn about the great stately tree-boles lifting their foliage to the light and air high above us. It was simply a Paradise—a Garden of Eden. But not without its serpent either—many of them, indeed.
As we went climbing up like this the Captain signed to us to halt and listen, whispering, “The blacks!” and sure enough we heard the crack- ling of twigs near us, but it was too thick to see anything. Every time we went on they followed us, and stopped when we did. They always track like that.
“Beware of a spear,” whispered the Captain when we came to any more open space. was far more concerned about the snakes—of which I am terrified, alive or dead—and somehow a sort of fierce enjoyment of the situation possessed me. I liked the danger, actually delighted in it, and was surprised to find an ardent desire waking in me for a real fight. It was partly the intoxication of the wild riot of nature around us.
Suddenly I forgot all about blacks, for as we swung ourselves up by the aid of the creeper ropes over the great boulders, a difficult task, laden as we were with orchids and plants, I came right on the coils of a huge snake. The Captain was above, Mack between, and I lowest down.
“A snake!” I cried.
“Kill it,” called back the Captain. It was the last thing I thought of doing at the moment. The snake began at once to try to escape upwards over a huge boulder.
