eached
its height, and now a new danger threatened them. The huge tree rocked
to and fro under the gusts of wind, as though it had been a bulrush, and
every now and then a loud crack from below, intimated that one of the
strong roots had yielded to its violence. At length, after one blast,
more fierce than any which had preceded it, the last fibre gave way. De
Walden felt the great trunk bend slowly forward, and settle down in the
water; and almost immediately afterwards it was carried down the
current, whirling and crashing against other trees as it went, with a
force which nearly shook its occupants from their hold. Fortunately
they had taken their stations on a branch which still remained above the
water when the tree was uprooted; but it was nevertheless only by the
most desperate exertion of the little strength which still remained to
them, that they could save themselves from dropping, exhausted and
benumbed, into the watery abyss beneath.

At length the dawn began to glimmer, and showed that the tree, which had
become entangled with a number of others, had reached a point in the
river where it could proceed no further. The vast floating _debris_ had
lodged against lofty rocks, which projected some distance into the
stream, and thus an insuperable obstacle was offered to its farther
progress. As the light grew stronger, it revealed a spectacle so
extraordinary, and at the same time so frightful, that De Walden, with
all his long and varied experience, could not recall the like of it.
Numberless animals had taken refuge, as he and his party had done, in
the boughs of trees, or had been carried against them by the torrent.
The confused mass of trunks and branches was now crowded with the most
strangely assorted occupants that had ever been brought together since
the day of the great deluge; their natural instincts being, for the
time, completely overpowered by terror. The lion and the eland crouched
close beside one another; the steinbok and the ocelot clung to the same
limb; the hyena and the sheep, the tiger and zebra, jostled each other,
all alike apparently unaware of the presence of their neighbours. More
deadly enemies still were close at hand unheeded. Huge pythons, puff
adders, cobras, ondaras, black snakes, were twisted round every
projecting bough, darting their heads to and fro, and protruding their
tongues in the extremity of alarm. Even the huge bulk of the rhinoceros
might be discerned here a