“Why, it’s just nonsense,” he said. “Talk about escaping. Why, one has got nothing to do but shove these up a little way and creep through. Then the attap will all fall back again, and no one will see as the place has been disturbed. Then there is the getting down again. Well, that’s just as easy as it is to get up. Oh, don’t I wish Mister Archie was all right! These ’ere Malays must be fools to think of shutting up a couple of English young fellows in a place like this. Well, it’s awful hot here. The mats are quite warm still with the sunshine. I will just let in some air.”
He began thrusting the attap thatch a little upward, and there was a loud scuffling and beating of wings.
“Birds,” he muttered; “and a good roost, too. Wonder what they are.”
Then there was a puff of cool, moist, night air seeming to be sucked into the building as he made an opening.
“Ah, that’s just prime,” he sighed; and he raised himself a little more, and then, as he thrust out one hand to get a fresh hold of the bamboo batten, he stopped short, silent and motionless, and with cold perspiration breaking out all over his face, for his hand had closed upon one of the battens, which felt cold and scaly; and but for the fact that his left arm was hooked over one of the sloping supports of the ridge-pole, he would have dropped heavily back on to the floor of the elephant-stable.
As it was, his legs felt as if they were hanging paralysed downward, and he was conscious of the fact that the batten that he had last grasped was slowly gliding through his right hand and getting thinner and thinner, till it passed rustling away right in amongst the palm-leaf thatching.
“Oh dear!” sighed Peter Pegg, “could that have been fancy? It felt just like a big snake. Phew! How hot it is! And yet I feel quite cold. Is it fancy? I know snakes do climb trees, but what could a snake be doing up here in the thatch? Oh, murder! It’s all right enough. I know! Didn’t the Doctor tell Mister Archie that they crawled up the walls and had their regular runs so that they could catch the rats and birds?”
He made a movement, as he began to master the strange feeling of dread, to replace his feet in the rough trellis into which his toes had been thrust, and then woke to the fact that his legs were not swinging downwards, for the half-paralysing sensation had been caused by sheer dread.
“Think of that, now!” he said. “I thought they would give way. Here, let’s get down out of this. Shouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s snakes swarming all over the place. That one didn’t bite me, did it? Don’t know that I should mind a honest bite, but some of these things are poison. Here, I have had enough of this;” and he felt about with a strange feeling of creepiness for the batten that he had not touched. This he grasped shrinkingly.
“Oh, this ain’t a snake,” he said. “Bamboo; and a thick ’un, too, for here’s a knot. Here, don’t be such a coward, Peter. Go on, comrade. That there snake’s gone, and it was more afraid of you than you were of it.”