“Guess he is,” answered Mark, in a hoarse voice. “Anyway he’s gone, and so is the fishing line.”
“I don’t care about the line, Mark. Wasn’t he awful?”
“That’s what he was, Frank—the nastiest thing I ever saw in my life.”
“That settles fishing for me. I wouldn’t want to catch another water snake for a million dollars!”
It was fully five minutes before they continued on their way, and then they did so quietly, as if afraid a noise might bring the reptile after them again. But the snake failed to re-appear and soon they were a mile or more away from the spot.
Just before encountering the snake they had noticed a tribe of monkeys on the shore, watching them intently. The monkeys had followed them for a short distance but had dropped out of sight as soon as the water snake appeared.
“There come the monkeys again,” said Mark, presently, and he was right. With a strange shrieking and howling they pushed some brushwood aside and came close to the water’s edge, where they squatted in a long row, eyeing the canoe in a wondering manner and occasionally reaching out a paw as if beckoning the craft to come closer.
“No, thank you,” said Frank, mockingly. “We don’t care to trust ourselves in your hands.”
As they pushed up the river the monkeys followed them, still howling, sometimes singly and then in a deafening chorus.
“There is this much about it,” said Frank, as he gazed at the creatures, which numbered fully a hundred. “I don’t want to land while they are around.”