Ben volunteered, saying that he would waken, as he expressed it, "at
the bat of a cat's eye."

Leaving Ben in the boat with a blanket and Winchester, the other two
retired to the hut prepared for their reception, and lay down, as they
thought, for the night. Duff was soon asleep, but Ralph remained
wakeful.

To add to his restlessness he soon found his blankets alive with fleas,
from which these native huts are hardly ever free. After fighting and
scratching for an hour or more, he got up and returned to the open air
for relief.

The scene was both weird and dismal. The small clearing, densely
walled in by the forest where the trees sprang nearly two hundred feet
in the air, seemed to be stifling under the compression, though the
feeling was but the resulting languor of a tropic night without a
breeze. Sundry strange and melancholy calls issued in varying cadences
from the wilderness, and an occasional splash from the river denoted
the passage of some huge marine animal. Crocodiles were bellowing
sullenly up stream, and from the closed huts issued the sounds of heavy
slumber.

He was thinking it strange that no one should remain on guard amid a
life so savage and isolated as that of these simple people, when he was
aroused by a touch on his arm, as he sat musing on a log before the
embers of their fire.