their elastic necks, while their eyes glittered and their forked tongues
darted in and out of the opening in their jaws, they did not strike,
only kept him in a state of horror and suspense, till they made way for
one of the porcupines that had been named at supper-time. This came
quietly up to the foot of his bed, and walked up from his boots to his
knees, with its black and white quills lying down as smoothly as if they
formed so much excessively coarse hair. But then as the creature
continued its walk, to be soon upon the boy's chest, it seemed to get
into a violent passion, setting up its quills at all angles and rattling
them together till it seemed about to dash at him. But instead of doing
anything obnoxious it suddenly disappeared before the advance of a
skunk, which came trotting up his body from his feet, just after the
same fashion as the porcupine, but looking fiercely aggressive, in spite
of the beauty of its clean, glossy, black and white fur. Its eyes
gleamed and sparkled; it showed its glistening sharp white teeth, and
waving its erect tail, which curved over its back like a squirrel's, it
twitched in the same way, and seemed every moment about to make a rush
at the boy's face to inflict one of its dangerously poisonous bites,
while the twitching tail threatened the discharge of the horribly
offensive fluid which will send a determined dog yelling plaintively,
as, completely cowed, it beats a retreat.

It seemed an hour of expectancy for what did not come off, and all the
time the sleeper lay half-conscious in the painful experience, telling
himself that it was all fancy, for it was only a dream.

This was just as he was about to recover full consciousness, for the
skunk gradually died away from where it had seemed to be standing upon
his chest, and Chris lay wide awake with his heart beating, painfully
wide awake now, and with every nerve on the strain, as he listened and
tried to make out the meaning of a strange heavy breathing mingled with
a sniffing, snuffling which came from somewhere at the back of his head.

Chris's first thought was of springing up out of the trough-like
bed-place he had selected and escaping by the foot; but before he could
put this into effect there was a rustling sound on the big piece of rock
he had jammed in behind his head, and though he could see nothing he
could feel that something had stepped up on to the stone and was bending
over him; the snuffling breathing grew