ead of a fiend incarnate. Between his red
puffed lips his teeth showed needle-sharp and ivory-white; his eyes
were as evil as a caricature from _Simplicissimus_, and set deep in
his head, while his ears and nose were monstrous with fold upon fold
of skinny flaps. It was not a living face, but a mask of frightful
mobility.

I set him free, deeming anything so ugly well worthy of life, if such
could find sustenance among his fellows and win a mate for himself
somewhere in this world. But he, for all his hideousness and unseemly
mien, is not the vampire; the blood-sucking bat has won a mantle of
deceit from the hands of Nature--a garb that gives him a modest and
not unpleasing appearance, and makes it a difficult matter to
distinguish him from his guileless confreres of our summer evenings.

But in the tropics,--the native land of the hammock,--not only the
mysteries of the night, but the affairs of the day may be legitimately
investigated from this aerial point of view. It is a fetish of belief
in hot countries that every unacclimatized white man must, sooner or
later, succumb to that sacred custom, the siesta. In the cool of the
day he may work vigorously, but this hour of rest is indispensable. To
a healthful person, living a reasonable life, the siesta is sheer
luxury. However, in camp, when the sun nears the zenith and the hush
which settles over the jungle proclaims that most of the wild
creatures are resting, one may swing one's hammock in the very heart
of this primitive forest and straightway be admitted into a new
province, where rare and unsuspected experiences are open to the
wayfarer. This is not the province of sleep or dreams, where all
things are possible and preeminently reasonable; for one does not go
through sundry hardships and all manner of self-denial, only to be
blindfolded on the very threshold of his ambition. No naturalist of a
temperament which begrudges every unused hour will, for a moment,
think of sleep under such conditions. It is not true that the rest and
quiet are necessary to cool the Northern blood for active work in the
afternoon, but the eye and the brain can combine relaxation with
keenest attention.

In the northlands the difference in the temperature of the early dawn
and high noon is so slight that the effect on birds and other
creatures, as well as plants of all kinds, is not profound. But in the
tropics a change takes place which is as pronounced as that brought
about by day