Good nights were said, and then Mr. Hampton and Niellsen parting company with Bob went to their tent. So fatigued was the big fellow after an arduous day of marching that he was half-asleep, while disrobing, and he tumbled into his sleeping bag unaware of the fact that his comrades watched his every movement alertly through slitted eyelids.
One long sigh he gave, the kind a fellow emits just before settling down to a good night’s sleep. He squirmed once or twice, making himself comfortable. Then his eyes closed and he fall into that half-waking, half-sleeping stage from which insensibly one drifts into profound slumber.
Suddenly his every nerve quivered. He was just on the point of drawing his body together and springing up, blankets and all, when he recalled the advice given him for just such an emergency and by an effort of will controlled his nerves so that he lay perfectly still and motionless. But what an effort was required! For big Bob felt something clammy and cold touch his leg, something alive, something that moved and wriggled and was gliding alongside his body toward his head.
Undoubtedly, it was a snake. Into his mind leaped recollection of what had been said only a short time previously about the camp fire on the subject of snakes.
Niellsen had said puff-adders were the deadliest of snakes, and likewise that they preferred to coil themselves in a fellow’s bedding. This must be a puff-adder, nothing less.
If a fellow exhibited no sign of life when in the vicinity of a snake, Mr. Hampton had earlier declared, the reptile might fail to become alarmed and might glide away without striking. It was his only chance. And big Bob, suffering agonies of mental torture, nevertheless exercised an iron self-control and lay without moving a muscle.
But not for long could he or anyone control himself under such conditions. Hot eyeballs glaring into the darkness began to see pinwheels and rockets. He felt as if his chest would burst. In another moment, he must let go, and leap up, no matter what the consequences.
All this time the clammy something had been creeping farther and farther up Bob’s body. Now it came to his thigh, and then he could feel it on his abdomen. Bob couldn’t stand the torture of passivity any longer. He was just on the verge of crying out in horror, when realization came to him with a jolt that the something, whatever it was, was crawling, not gliding, crawling on four legs. Therefore, it couldn’t be a snake.
One bound shot Bob out of his blankets. He seized an electric torch which he always kept near at hand, and whirling about focused its brilliant gleam upon his “flea” bag. There, in the middle of the blankets, blinking in the white glare, sat an insignificant little green frog.
Which felt the smaller—the surprised froglet or the chagrined Bob—it is difficult to say.