should probably escape a lingering and far more painful death, I
dropped into the cloud of foliage beneath me and clutched
desperately at the twigs as I fell. For a moment I felt myself
sustained; but branch after branch gave way beneath my weight,
and then I only remember, very dimly, a swift flight through the
air before losing consciousness.



CHAPTER VII

With the return of consciousness, I at first had a vague
impression that I was lying somewhere, injured, and incapable of
motion; that it was night, and necessary for me to keep my eyes
fast shut to prevent them from being blinded by almost continuous
vivid flashes of lightning. Injured, and sore all over, but warm
and dry--surely dry; nor was it lightning that dazzled, but
firelight. I began to notice things little by little. The fire
was burning on a clay floor a few feet from where I was lying.
Before it, on a log of wood, sat or crouched a human figure. An
old man, with chin on breast and hands clasped before his
drawn-up knees; only a small portion of his forehead and nose
visible to me. An Indian I took him to be, from his coarse,
lank, grey hair and dark brown skin. I was in a large hut,
falling at the sides to within two feet of the floor; but there
were no hammocks in it, nor bows and spears, and no skins, not
even under me, for I was lying on straw mats. I could hear the
storm still raging outside; the rush and splash of rain, and, at
intervals, the distant growl of thunder. There was wind, too; I
listened to it sobbing in the trees, and occasionally a puff