larm, until I could no longer
drive them either with shouts or threatening gestures. They only
retreated a few feet, forming an irregular circle round me.

"Thus hemmed in, I became frightened in turn. I loaded my gun and
fired; I killed none. They are impervious to a bullet, except in the
eye, or under the forearm. It was too dark to aim at these parts; and
my shots glanced harmlessly from the pyramidal scales of their bodies.
The loud report, however, and the blaze frightened them, and they fled,
to return again after a long interval. I was asleep when they returned;
I had gone to sleep in spite of my efforts to keep awake. I was
startled by the touch of something cold; and half-stilled by the strong
musky odour that filled the air. I threw out my arms; my fingers rested
upon an object slippery and clammy: it was one of these monsters--one of
gigantic size. He had crawled close alongside me, and was preparing to
make his attack; as I saw that he was bent in the form of a bow, and I
knew that these creatures assume that attitude when about to strike
their victim. I was just in time to spring aside, and avoid the stroke
of his powerful tail, that the next moment swept the ground where I had
lain. Again I fired, and he with the rest once more retreated to the
lake.

"All thoughts of going to sleep were at an end. Not that I felt
wakeful; on the contrary, wearied with my day's exertion--for I had had
a long pull under a hot tropical sun--I could have lain down upon the
earth, in the mud, anywhere, and slept in an instant. Nothing but the
dread certainty of my peril kept me awake. Once again before morning, I
was compelled to battle with the hideous reptiles, and chase them away
with a shot from my gun.

"Morning came at length, but with it no change in my perilous position.
The light only showed me my island prison, but revealed no way of escape
from it. Indeed, the change could not be called for the better, for the
fervid rays of an almost vertical sun poured down upon me until my skin
blistered. I was already speckled by the bites of a thousand
swamp-flies and mosquitoes, that all night long had preyed upon me.
There was not a cloud in the heavens to shade me; and the sunbeams smote
the surface of the dead bayou with a double intensity.

"Towards evening, I began to hunger; no wonder at that: I had not eaten
since leaving the village settlement. To assuage thirst, I drank the
water of the lake, turbi