way, but it was only in fancy, for he too,
utterly worn out by the morning's exertions, was fast asleep, without a
thought that danger might be near.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

COOKERY UNDER QUEER CIRCUMSTANCES.

"Ah-e! Ah-e! Ah-e!"

A loud peculiar call, followed by a repetition from a distance, too long
after to be a reverberation, though strange echoes had been heard from
far up the mountain when a shot was fired well down in one or other of
the ravines which scored the slopes of the volcano.

There was a pause of a few minutes, another cry came again, and was
answered or echoed.

The first time it had no effect whatever upon Jack, who lay upon his
back fast asleep, in the deep slumber which comes to the hungry after
that hunger has been appeased.

But there was the strange instinct of self-preservation awake in the
lad, and that had started into watchfulness, though the body remained
inert, and when the cry was repeated the body was warned, and Jack
aroused into wakefulness, feeling, he knew not why, that something was
wrong.

It was close upon sunset, and the cap of the mountain glowed once more
as if it had burst into eruption, but all was perfectly still save the
whistling and shrieking of birds at a distance.

He did not move, but turned his eyes toward where Ned lay snoring
softly; then he cast his eyes toward the fire, which was apparently
quite out, but the next moment the soft sea-breeze came with a gentle
puff, and the embers glowed faintly, showing that with a little tending
there was enough left to revive the blaze again.

The silence in face of that wondrous glow overhead was oppressive, and
the feeling of danger at hand seemed to grow, and then began to die out,
for there was nothing visible, till all at once a peculiarity close up
by the glowing wood ashes took the lad's attention, and then he
shuddered slightly, for there, evidently attracted by the warmth, toward
which they had crawled, were several snakes, with the possibility of
there being more which he could not see. For the most part they were
small, but a part of the coil of one showed that its owner must be as
thick as his arm, and beyond lay in a kind of double S one that was far
larger.

Then all at once there came the peculiar cry which had awakened him, and
it had hardly died out when it was answered from the edge of the forest
beyond the opening, at one side of which they lay.

"All right, Mr Jack, sir," said Ned in a m