greed to term her--cast off from alongside the _Mohawk_,
and under its influence the craft, with one leeboard down, slid across
the Javari at a speed that was as surprising as it was gratifying. And
when at length she slid in between the low, forest-clad banks of the
Tecuachy, the breeze was still fair for her, although the closer
proximity of the shores to each other caused it to come at times in
baffling flaws. Dick, as the sailor of the party, was naturally in
command, and when at length the sunlight vanished from the tree-tops on
the eastern shore of the stream, giving warning of the near approach of
night, he ran the raft into a convenient bight on the lee shore--that
the mosquitoes might not come off to them against the wind during the
night--and came to an anchor in the midst of what seemed to be an
unpeopled wilderness.

But if the country round about them was empty of human inhabitants--and
even of this they could not be certain--it seemed to be full to
overflowing of life of another sort, for no sooner had the swift tropic
night descended upon the adventurers, than the hot, humid air became
vibrant with sound, the dominant note of which was the _chur_ and hum of
myriads of insects haunting the dense forest on either hand, and the
still more dense undergrowth which cumbered the soil between the trunks
of the trees. This great volume of indescribable sound--amazing because
of its intensity, coupled with the knowledge that it was created, for
the most part, by creatures of almost microscopic dimensions--was
continuous, merely rising and falling at irregular intervals, like the
sough of the wind through the tree-tops; but it was constantly broken in
upon by other sounds, the most prominent of which was perhaps the
croaking of innumerable frogs, sounding like the rapid whirr of wooden
rattles and lasting continuously for a period of several minutes, and
then ceasing abruptly, as though at a signal, to recommence as abruptly
a few minutes later. These sounds were commonplace enough, and after an
hour or two to allow the ear to become accustomed to them, would of
themselves have been soothing and conducive to somnolence rather than
the reverse, but they were constantly being broken into by others so
strange, and in some cases so weird, that the night threatened to be a
sleepless one for at least the two white men of the party. For
instance, at pretty frequent intervals there came from the depths of the
forest, n