ally
it smashed the elevated reefs like chalk in a mortar. Tenbow is a wreck
of shattered coral terraces, clad in the eager growths which profit by
its trifling rise and which alone do profit. For the rest it remains the
island jungle, a section apart and untouched, almost impenetrable.

Junius Peabody began his exploration of this cheerful region by falling
on his face in a gully and bruising his nose very grievously. He found
no trail to guide him up the slope. It was pitted like slag, deceitful
as old honeycomb. The footing crumbled; tempting beds of moss and fern
slipped away at his clutch; twisting lianas caught his ankles and sent
him asprawl. The very ground seemed armed against him with a malignant
life of its own. He had to creep among jagged teeth that sliced his
flimsy garments and his putty-soft flesh. And when a loosened mass slid
gently over at a touch and caught and crushed an arm he scarcely
wondered whether any personal power had directed. It was all the same.

* * * * *

For a long time he lay looking at his pulped fingers and the driven
drops of blood from the quick of his nails, sensing the exquisite pain
almost as a luxury, hugging it to him. But at length he stirred and
began to wriggle forward again.

"If I'm going to die anyway," said Junius Peabody, "I'm going to die
doing this." Which was an extraordinary remark on all accounts....

And so by dint of following something and still following with unlimited
purpose over a limited terrain, he ran it down in the end and came to
the hiding place he sought.

A rooted instinct of the potentially criminal, which prompts them to be
ready to flee though no man pursueth, had moved the beachcombers of
Fufuti long since to prepare their snug retreat in the heart of the
Rocks. On the inward shore of the promontory they had found a level bit
of shelf screened by lush vegetation, with the green-stained cliff for
wall and the sapphire waters of the lagoon below for forecourt. Hither
they repaired in the intervals of lesser lawbreaking and free
entertainment, always secure of hearth and shelter where the broad
pandanus spread its shingles. And hither, straight as merry men to their
shaw, they had brought the great treasure of the morning.

A truly homelike scene was that on which Junius Peabody peered from
ambush above....

From the convenient branch of a tree the Sydney Duck had suspended by
its middle a single stout stick