f from falling, and for a few seconds there was a sharp scuffle
amongst the bamboos before they were safe.

"Look out, Ali," shouted Bob, on seeing their companion coming; "it's
bad landing."

But Ali was already in full career; as light and active of foot as a
deer, he made a quick rush and a leap, and landed in safety quite a yard
beyond the young officers.

"Well done! Hooray!" cried Bob, who had not the slightest objection to
seeing himself surpassed; while the two Malays in charge of the guns and
impediments on the other side stared at each other in astonishment, and
in a whisper asked if the young chief had gone out of his mind.

"Now then, Sambo-Jumbo," cried Bob, "over with those guns. Come along,
they are not loaded."

The two Malays stared, and Ali said a few words to them in their native
tongue, when they immediately gathered up the guns, and, being
bare-legged, waded across the stream, which was about four yards wide.

The last man came over with a rush as he neared the bank, for suddenly
from a reed-bed above them there was a wallow and a flounder, with a
tremendous disturbance in the water, as something shot down towards the
main stream.

"A crocodile," said Ali, as the young Englishmen directed at him a
wondering gaze.

"Crocodile!" cried Bob, snatching his gun from the attendant, and
hastily thrusting in cartridges, after which he ran along the stream
till checked by the tangled growth.

"No good," said Ali, laughing at his eagerness. "Gone."

The reptile was gone, sure enough, and it was doubtful which was the
more frightened, it or the Malays; so they went on along a narrow
jungle-path, that was walled up on either side by dense vegetation,
which seemed to have been kept hacked back by the heavy knives of the
working Malays. To have gone off to right or left would have been
impossible, so tangled and matted with canes and creepers was the
undergrowth, Bob waking up to the fact that here was the natural home of
the cane so familiar to schoolboys; the unfamiliar part being, that,
keeping to nearly the same diameter, these canes ran one, two, and even
three hundred feet in length, creeping, climbing, undulating, now
running up the side of some pillar-like tree to a convenient branch,
over which it passed to hang down again in a loop till it reached some
other tree, in and out of whose branches it would wind.

As they went on farther they were in a soft green twilight with at rare
interva