was a strange something that called him back
to the bank that he had left but a few minutes before. He fastened
his canoe again to the same branch and crept up to the same place,
feeling very uneasy and uncomfortable, but seeing nothing that could
alarm him--nothing that he could draw the bead of his rifle on. Yet,
something there was! For the second time he left, without being able
to account for the mysterious force that lured him to this gloomy,
moon-lit place on the dark, treacherous bank. In setting out in the
stream again he decided to fight off the uncanny, unexplainable feeling
that had called him back, but scarcely a stone's throw from the bank
he had the same desire to return,--a desire that he had never before
experienced. He went again, and looked, and meditated over the thing
that he did not understand.

He had not drunk _cachassa_ that day and was consequently quite sober;
he had not had fever for two weeks and was in good health physically as
well as mentally; he had never so much indulged in the dissipations of
civilisation that his nerves had been affected; he had lived all his
life in these surroundings and knew no fear of man or beast. And now,
this splendid type of manhood, free and unbound in his thoughts and
unprejudiced by superstition, broke down completely and hid his face
in his hands, sobbing like a child in a dark room afraid of ghosts. He
had been called to this spot three times without knowing the cause, and
now, the mysterious force attracting him, as a magnet does a piece of
iron, he was unable to move. Helpless as a child he awaited his fate.

Luckily three workers from headquarters happened to pass on their
way to their homes, which lay not far above the "Creek of Hell,"
and when they heard sobbing from the bank they called out.

The hypnotised _seringueiro_ managed to state that he had three
times been forced, by some strange power, to the spot where he now
was, unable to get away, and that he was deadly frightened. The
rubber-workers, with rifles cocked, approached in their canoe, fully
prepared to meet a jaguar, but when only a few yards from their comrade
they saw directly under the root where the man was sitting the head
of a monstrous boa-constrictor, its eyes fastened on its prey. Though
it was only a few feet from him, he had been unable to see it.

One of the men took good aim and fired, crushing the head of the snake,
and breaking the spell, but the intended victim was comp