Night turned the Burmese jungle into a frightening enemy. Towering trees, teak, acle, ironwood, shot straight upward, so close packed and dense that they blotted out the starlit sky.
Vines, some of them as thick as a man’s arm, were forever stretching low across the boys’ path, as if trying to hold them back from their bold venture.
What bothered Biff most of all was the sickening smell of the jungle. Rotted vegetation gave off a rank, stifling odor. Biff had been in the jungles of Brazil, but they were nothing compared to the one he and Chuba were forcing their way through.
During the two hours they had traveled in the waning daylight, their progress had been swift. Chuba knew the trails well. Sometimes, moving at a trot several steps ahead of Biff, the native boy would seem to be swallowed by hedges of low, thick brushwood. But he would reappear, parting the thick growth so that Biff could follow.
Moving swiftly, silently, without talking, to conserve their breath, Biff was suddenly startled. From directly overhead came a chorus of angry screams. Biff stopped and looked up.
“Only monkeys, Biff,” Chuba called back. “We wake them from their sleep, and they no like. Come.”
Once again Chuba took up his steady pace. Thorny bushes grabbed at Biff’s already tattered clothes. Ugly scratches marked his legs. Most upsetting was the unexpected change from dry land into dank, oozing swampland. Chuba never stopped, or gave any warning of what lay ahead. Time and again the native boy plunged into a narrow stream. Once the water, muddy, almost hot, came up to Biff’s waist. As he neared the opposite bank, he halted a moment to look back.
“Biff! Biff! Hurry! Out of the water!”
Biff leaped for the bank just as a partly submerged log moved swiftly through the water to the spot where he had been standing. As it reached the bank, the “log’s” jaws opened, and Biff heard the chilling sound of teeth gnashing together.
“Crocodile, Biff. Never stop in stream. Old croc might be hungry.”