g of birds busy feasting on fruit, and twice over
an angry chattering told them that they had monkeys for their companions
high overhead; but insect, bird, and the strangely agile creatures which
leaped and swung among the boughs, were for the most part invisible, and
they toiled on.

All at once Rob raised the bow he carried, and touched Shaddy sharply on
the shoulder.

"Eh? what's the matter, my lad?" cried the man, turning quickly.

"Look! Don't you see?" whispered Rob. "There, by that patch of green
light? Some one must have climbed up that green liana which hangs from
the bough. It is swinging still. Do you think a monkey has just been
up it, or is it some kind of wild cat?"

Shaddy uttered his low chuckling laugh as he stood still leaning upon
his bamboo staves.

"If it had been a cat we should have seen a desperate fight, my lad," he
replied. "If it was a monkey I'm sorry for him. He must have gone up
outside and come down in. Why, can't you see what it is?"

"A great liana, one of those tough creeper things. Look how curiously
it moves still! Some one's dragging at the end. No, it isn't. Oh,
Shaddy, it's a great serpent hanging from the bough!"

"That's more like it, my lad. Look! You can see its head now."

In effect the long, hideous-looking creature raised its head from where
it had been hidden by the growth below, twisted and undulated about for
a few moments, and then lifted it more and more till it could reach the
lower part of the bough from which it hung, and then, gradually
contracting its body into curves and loops, gathered itself together
till it hung in a mass from the branch.

"Not nice-looking things, Mr Rob, sir. Puts me in mind of those we saw
down by the water, but this looks like a different kind to them."

"Will--will it attack us?" said Rob in a hoarse whisper.

"Nay, not it. More likely to hurry away and hide, unless it is very
hungry or can't get out of the road. Then it might."

"But we can't pass under that."

"Well, no, Mr Rob, sir; it don't look like a sensible sort of thing to
do, though it seems cowardly to sneak away from a big land-eel sort of a
thing. What do you say? Shall we risk it and let go at my gentleman
with our sticks if he takes any notice of us, or go round like cowards?"

"Go round like cowards," said Rob decisively.

"Right!" said Shaddy, who carefully took his bearings again, and, in
order to have something at which he could gaze b