ared above the tops of the
reeds, with his forked tongue flickering about the blunt nose.
These sights, and the sudden snorts from unseen beasts, bred in him
a growing feeling of uneasiness, which in turn weakened his powers
of reasoning, so that he blundered hither and thither in a sort of
reckless fury, until he went flat, face downwards, in black mud,
that gripped him at every point. If he had struggled he would have
been hopelessly bogged, but luckily he recovered his wits, and set
himself slowly to extricate himself. His left foot was in up to the
knee, and his left arm was sinking each moment, when he steadied
himself and drew his knife. Beaching out, he cut a swathe of reeds,
drew them towards him with the knife-blade, packed them under his
chin and breast, then rolled over on to this firmer support, after a
strong and steady pull. Repeating the performance, he managed to get
one knee on to a bedding of reeds, then with one violent effort
freed himself and reached hard ground.

This incident shook him up so, that coming, after another effort, to
the open where he had left the buck, he gave up the struggle, seeing
that he must think of some other plan if he wished to get alive out
of this prison.

First he rested until his strength came back, then he cleaned his
mud-covered rifle, and scraped the black ooze off his clothes with
the knife. Then he heard a murmur in the reeds--a snap, then a
rustle; a long pause, then a rustling again. He stood up with rifle
ready, and he saw a reed shake about ten yards away, then heard it
snap. He shouted, and the rustling ceased, to break out after an
interval on the other side. Again it was resumed in the front, and
in a little while it seemed to him that the reeds were alive with
the stealthy rustlings of beasts and reptiles, all moving towards
him. A reed bent again a little way off, and he fired in the
direction. There was a crash and a growl, followed by a peculiar
moaning from the opposite side. From somewhere deep in the sea of
green there came the hoarse bellow of a bull crocodile. Nothing now
could have induced him to enter that bewildering labyrinth again,
and he looked about with a shudder, for the day was sinking to its
close, and the night would soon be upon him. There was only one
thing that could protect him in the night, and that was fire. With a
feverish energy, regardless now of the rustlings about his little
island, he began to cut the tallest of the reeds