“So it is, and it shows that the river isn’t far off. I wish there were none, and then we’d cut down some bamboos and float away to the village. But not to-night. Let’s go to sleep.”
There was again silence, with the hot air growing unbearable, and Ned had just made up his mind to undress, when from out of the jungle, plainly heard through the thin plaited bamboo and palm walls, came a peculiar cry—Coo-ow, coo-ow—to be answered from farther away.
“What’s that?” said Ned, half aloud, speaking to himself.
“Argus pheasant,” said Frank, drowsily. “Oh, I do wish you wouldn’t bother. Wonder whether they’ve got any of that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“To send us to sleep again.”
“I wouldn’t take a drop,” thought Ned; and then in the hot silence he lay thinking about Frank’s father, wondering what was going on at the rajah’s village, and what his uncle thought of his absence, till weary nature closed his eyes, and even the loud cry of the argus pheasant and the melancholy howl of a tiger prowling about had no effect upon his slumbers.
But a touch effected that which sound had not produced.
For, mingled with his dreams, he had one of a great rat gnawing very softly somewhere by his head, and this kept on for what seemed in his dream like a tremendous length of time before it ceased, and the rat came in through the hole and began walking over his face and sat up on his lips.
That woke him, and he felt the perspiration standing on his brow, for it was no dream: the rat was seated on his lips, and as he lay motionless like one in a nightmare, he felt the little animal glide from his lips to his shoulder, then down his arm to where his hand lay upon his chest, play with the fingers for a few moments, and then grasp them firmly.