I learned from bitter
experience.

It was one morning, years ago, but the memory of it is with me still,
vivid and painful. One of the party had left her hammock, which was
tied securely since she was skilful in such matters, to sit down and
rest in another, belonging to a servant. This was slung at one end of
a high, tropical porch, which was without the railing that surrounds
the more pretentious verandahs of civilization, so that the hammock
swung free, first over the rough flooring, then a little out over the
yard itself. A rope slipped, the faulty knot gave way, and she fell
backward--a seven-foot fall with no support of any kind by which she
might save herself. A broken wrist was the price she had to pay for
another's carelessness--a broken wrist which, in civilization, is
perhaps, one of the lesser tragedies; but this was in the very heart
of the Guiana wilderness. Many hours from ether and surgical skill,
such an accident assumes alarming proportions. Therefore, I repeat my
warning: tie your knots or examine them.

It is true, that, when all is said and done, a dweller in hammocks may
bring upon himself any number of diverse dangers of a character never
described in books or imagined in fiction. A fellow naturalist of
mine never lost an opportunity to set innumerable traps for the lesser
jungle-folk, such as mice and opossums, all of which he religiously
measured and skinned, so that each, in its death, should add its mite
to human knowledge. As a fisherman runs out set lines, so would he
place his traps in a circle under his hammock, using a cord to tie
each and every one to the meshes. This done, it was his custom to lie
at ease and wait for the click below which would usher in a new
specimen,--perhaps a new species,--to be lifted up, removed, and
safely cached until morning. This strategic method served a double
purpose: it conserved natural energy, and it protected the catch. For
if the traps were set in the jungle and trustfully confided to its
care until the break of day, the ants would leave a beautifully
cleaned skeleton, intact, all unnecessarily entrapped.

Now it happened that once, when he had set his nocturnal traps, he
straightway went to sleep in the midst of all the small jungle people who
were calling for mates and new life, so that he did not hear the click
which was to warn him that another little beast of fur had come unawares
upon his death. But he heard, suddenly, a disturbance in the l