rers thought so for a time, since there seemed no other way of
accounting for the illness which had so suddenly seized upon them.

At first they were not so very greatly alarmed, for they could not
realise the idea that they had been absolutely poisoned. A little
suffering and it would be all over, when they would take good care not
to eat roast hornbill again. No, nor even stewed or broiled; so that
now the old hen and her young one were no longer looked upon as so much
provision ahead. Both would be thrown away, to form food for the first
predatory creature that might chance to light upon them.

As time passed, however, and the sufferers, instead of feeling relieved,
only seemed to be growing worse--the vertigo and nausea continuing,
while the vomiting was renewed in frequent and violent attacks--they at
length became seriously alarmed, believing themselves poisoned to death.

They knew not what to do. They had no medicine to act as an antidote;
and if they had been in possession of all the drugs in the
pharmacopoeia, they would not have known which to make use of. Had it
been the bite of a venomous snake or other reptile, the Malay,
acquainted with the usual native remedies, might have found some
herbaceous balsam in the forest; though in the darkness there would have
been a difficulty about this, since it was now midnight, and there was
no moon in the sky--no light to look for anything. They could scarcely
see one another, and each knew where his neighbours lay only by hearing
their moans and other exclamations of distress.

As the hours dragged on wearily, they became still more and more
alarmed. They seriously believed that death was approaching. A
terrible contemplation it was, after all they had passed through; the
perils of shipwreck, famine, thirst; the danger of being drowned; one of
them escaping from a hideous reptile; another from the coils of a
serpent; a third from having his skull cracked in by a fallen fruit, and
afterwards split open by the beak of an angry bird. Now, after all
these hairbreadth perils and escapes, to be poisoned by eating the flesh
of this very bird--to die in such simple and apparently causeless
fashion; though it may seem almost ridiculous, it was to them not a whit
the less appalling. And appalled they were, as time passed, and they
felt themselves growing worse instead of better. They were surely
poisoned--surely going to die.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

AN UNEASY NI