thers of younger growth, unmoved, were hung
Like stone-drops from a cavern's fretted height."

The banyan often measures thirty feet in girth; the one selected by
Captain Redwood was probably not less than twenty-five feet. Its
peculiarity is that it throws out roots from all its branches, so that
as fast as each branch, in growing downwards, touches the ground, it
takes root, and in due time serves as a substantial prop to the
horizontal bough, which, without some such support, would give way
beneath its own weight.

They intended it for only a temporary dwelling-place, until their
strength should be sufficiently established to enable them to start on
their contemplated overland journey, with a prospect of being able to
continue it to its end.

It seemed, at length, as if fortune, hitherto so adverse, had turned a
smiling face toward them; and they were not much longer to be detained
upon that wild and dangerous shore. For the same day on which they
removed from the upas to the fig-tree, the latter furnished them with an
article of food in sufficient quantity to stock their larder for nearly
a week, and of a quality superior in strengthening powers to either
roast or stewed hornbill, and quite equal to the eggs of the
mound-making birds.

It was not the fruit of the fig that had done this; but an animal they
had discovered crawling along one of its branches. It was a reptile of
that most hideous and horrid shape, the _saurian_; and only the
hungriest man could ever have looked upon, with thoughts of eating it.
But Saloo felt no repugnance of this kind; he knew that the huge lizard
creeping along the limb of the banyan-tree, over five feet long, and
nearly as thick as the body of a man, would afford flesh not only
eatable, but such as would have been craved for by Apicius, had the
Roman epicure ever journeyed through the islands of the Malayan
Archipelago, and found an opportunity of making trial of it.

What they saw slowly traversing the branch above them was one of those
huge lizards of the genus _Hydrosaurus_, of which there are several
species in Indian climes--like the _iguanas_ of America--harmless
creatures, despite their horrid appearance, and often furnishing to the
hunter or forester a meal of chops and steaks both tender and delicious.

With this knowledge of what it would afford them, Saloo had no
difficulty in persuading Captain Redwood to send a bullet through the
skull of the _hydrosaurus_, a