orkings on their left, the boys pushed their way
through the undergrowth for some distance without resting, and then paused
in a little glade and listened.

"Gee," cried Jimmie, after standing at attention for a moment, "there's
some one following us. We'd better dig in a little deeper."

"It may be a wild animal," said Peter, who, while ready to face whatsoever
peril might come in the company of the man they were running away from,
was in mortal terror of the jungle.

"There are no man-eaters here," Jimmie replied, unwinding a snake-like
creeper from his neck and pushing on.

"I can feel snakes crawling up my legs now," complained Peter, with a
shiver.

The noise in the rear came on about as fast as they could move, and at
last Jimmie sat down on a fallen tree.

"He can hear us," he said. "We might as well be hiding with a brass
band."

"Then we'll keep quiet until he passes," Peter trembled out. "I'm afraid
to go plunging through here in the dark, anyway."

Making as little noise as possible, the boys crept into a particularly
dense thicket and crouched down. Almost as soon as they were at rest the
noise behind ceased. In five minutes it began again, but the sounds grew
fainter and fainter and finally died out.

"He was followin' us all right," Jimmie said. "Now we'll dig in a little
deeper, so as not to come out anywhere near him, and then go back to
camp."

They walked, or crept, rather, until they were tired out and then looked
about.

There were giant ceiba trees, with trunks as smooth as if they had been
polished by human hands, tremendous cotton-trees, their branches bowed
down with air plants, palms, to which clung clusters of wild nuts, thick,
bulbous trees, taller trees with buttressed roots, as if Nature knew the
strain that was to be placed upon them and braced them up accordingly,
trees with bark like mirrors, and trees with six-inch spike growing from
the bark.

And through this thicket of trees ran creepers resembling pythons, smaller
vines which tore at the boughs of the trees, and a mass of running things
on the ground which caught the foot and seemed to crawl up toward the
throat. By daylight it would have been weird and beautiful. At night it
was uncanny and fearsome.

"We ought to be in sight of the lights by this time," Peter said, after
they had crept on and rested again and again.

"Yes," said Jimmie, "but we ain't. We're lost in the jungle, if you want
to know."

CHAPT