e beast had thrust its head, as far
as its eyes, into the opening, it could advance no farther. Then,
summoning all his courage to his aid, he retraced his steps, and,
plucking an arrow from his quiver, poised it in his hand for a moment--
he could not use his bow, as it was too long to be drawn in so confined
a space--and then hurled it with all his strength straight at the
beast's left eye. The missile flew true--indeed it could scarcely miss
at such exceedingly short range--and buried itself half its length in
the great blinking orb; whereupon, with a bellowing roar that echoed and
reverberated like thunder in that underground chamber, the monstrous
head was suddenly withdrawn, and the next moment a sound of tremendous
splashing told the hardy assailant that his enemy had precipitately
retreated to the depths of the pool. Then, acting more by instinct than
reason, Phil rushed back along the way which he had come, out of the
tunnel, on to and along the ledge--heedless of the violent disturbance
of the water which told of the convulsive movements of the enormous
shape hidden beneath its surface--and so back to the cavern entrance,
out of which he rushed almost as precipitately as the ape had done half
an hour earlier. "No wonder," thought the young man, "that the poor
beast was frightened, if he happened to catch a glimpse of the monster
of the pool!" Some two hours later he turned up at the spot where the
little party had made their temporary camp beside the river, and
nonchalantly flung to the ground the carcass of a Guazu-puti deer which
he had chanced to encounter on his way back. He found that Dick and
Vilcamapata had made good use of their time during his absence, for they
had not only found a splendid tree out of which to fashion a canoe, but
had actually felled it; and there it lay, within a couple of hundred
feet of the river, ready to be hewn into shape and hollowed out.

"You've been away a long time," remarked Dick; "gramfer here and I were
seriously discussing the desirability of starting out to look for you.
Have you found the game scarce?"

"Game of the kind that I was after, yes; but game of a very different
sort, no," answered Stukely. "The fact is, Dick," he continued, "that I
have had quite an interesting afternoon. For I have discovered a cliff
carved all over with pictures that there is nobody to look at, and--why,
yes, now that I come to think of it, some of those pictures show the
very b