“No, my lad, and never will have; but I didn’t mean that. Look a bit lower.”
“Oh, you mean in that next tree. Ugh! how horrible!” cried Rob, with a shudder. “Has that been driven here by the water?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I mean that tree I pointed to. Look there in the fork.”
“Yes; I can see it, Rob,” said Mr Brazier. “It’s comfortably asleep. We must do as it does. Not the first time an animal has given men a lesson.”
Rob stared from one to the other as if wondering why they did not see with his eyes.
“Can’t you see it, Rob—your puma?”
“Eh? Oh yes, I see him now, but I meant in the other tree. Look! the great brute is all in motion. Why, it’s a perfect monster!”
“Phew!” whistled Shad; “I didn’t see it. Look, Mr Brazier, sir. That is something like a snake.”
He pointed now to where a huge serpent was worming its way about the boughs of one of the trees in a slow, sluggish way, as if trying to find a spot where it could curl up and be at rest till the water, which had driven it from its customary haunts, had subsided.
“What shall we do, Shaddy?” whispered Rob. “Why, that must be nearly sixty feet long.”