"Look--look!"

He pointed at the effect of the waves on the forest, for from where they
sat the whole side was a ridge of foam, while the tree-tops were waving
to and fro and undulating like a verdant sea as the water rushed on
among their trunks.

"Can't get much worse than this, I think," said Shaddy, when the water
calmed down again to its steady swift flow; "only it's spoiling our
estate, which will be a bed of mud when the flood goes down."

"But will it go down?" asked Rob excitedly.

"Some time, certain," replied Shaddy. "The rivers have a way in this
country of wetting it all over, and I daresay it does good. At all
events, it makes the trees grow."

"Yes, but will it sweep them away?" said Rob, looking round nervously.

"It does some, Mr Rob, sir, as you've seen to-day, but I think we're
all right here."

Rob glanced at Brazier, whose face was very stern and pale; and,
consequent upon his weakness, he looked ghastly as another wave came
down the river, and swept over the deeply inundated clearing, washing
right up to the fork of the tree, and hissing onward through the
closely-packed forest.

Another followed, and then another, each apparently caused by the
bursting of some dam of trees and _debris_ of the shores; but they were
less than those which had preceded them, and an hour later the water was
perfectly calm and motionless, save in the course of the river, where it
rushed onward at a rapid rate.

"We've passed the worst," said Shaddy; and after glancing at him
quickly, to see if he meant it or was only speaking to give him
encouragement, Rob sat looking round at the watery waste, for as far as
his eyes could penetrate there was no sight of dry land. Everywhere the
trees stood deep in water, that was still as the surface of a lake
through which a swift river ran, with its course tracked by rapid and
eddy, and dotted still with the vegetation torn out from the banks.

As the boy turned to the great tree beside him he could not keep back a
shudder, for the monstrous serpent was in restless motion, seeking for
some means of escape; and though there was no probability of its
reaching their resting-place, the idea would come that if the writhing
creature did drop from the tree, overbalancing itself in its efforts to
escape, it might make a frantic struggle and reach theirs.

As he thought this he caught sight of the guide watching him.

"What is it, my lad?" he whispered; and the lad, after a