dug-out was called a cayuca. It was about twenty feet long, but
very narrow, and was hollowed from a single trunk of mahogany--for
mahogany was as common down here as pine up North. Charley felt quite
luxurious, riding in a mahogany boat!

He never had dreamed of such scenery. The crooked river flowed between
a perfect mass of solid green blotched with blazes of flowers.
Bananas, plantains, cocoa and other palms, bread-fruit, gigantic teak
trees, dense leaved mangoes, acacias and mangroves on stilt roots like
crutches, sugar-cane, sapotes with sweet green fruit the size of one's
head, sapodillas with fruit looking like russet apples, mahogany,
rose-wood, and a thousand others which neither Mr. Grigsby nor
Charley's father recognized, grew wild, as thick as grass--and every
tree and shrub was wreathed with flowering vines trying to drag it
down. Monkeys and parrots and other odd beasts and birds screamed and
gamboled in the branches; and in the steeply rising jungle and in the
water strange noises were continually heard. There were violent
splashes and snorts from alligators--and Mr. Grigsby saw two wild
boars. Now and then sluggish savannahs or swamps opened on right or
left, filled with vegetation and animals.

It was the rainy season and the river was running full, about
seventy-five yards wide, with a strong current in the middle. Paddling
hard, Maria and Francisco zigzagged from side to side across the bends,
seeking the stiller water and the eddies. Trees bent over and almost
brushed the canoe--and suddenly Maria, in the stern, cried out and
pointed.

"Python!" he uttered. "Mira! (Look!)"

He and Francisco backed water and stared. So did their passengers, and
well it was that the canoe had been stopped. From the lower branches
of a large leafy tree jutting out into the very course of the canoe was
hanging a long, mottled object, swaying and weaving. Charley saw the
head--a snake's head! A boa constrictor, as large around as a barrel,
and with most of its body hidden in the tree!

"Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Grigsby, and raised his rifle. With single
movement the two boatmen swung the canoe broadside and held it. The
Fremonter sent eagle glance adown his leveled barrel--the rifle cracked
and puffed a little waft of smoke. "Spat!" sounded the bullet. The
huge snake began to writhe and twist, fairly shaking the tree; then
fold by fold it issued, in a horrid mazy line of yellow and black
(would it neve