“An elephant, with a mahout dozing on his head, was advancing toward us”
Myself after four days in the jungle, and with the Siamese soldiers with whom we fell in now and then between Myáwadi and Rehang. I had sold my helmet
We listened intently, breathlessly. A far-off howl sounded above the droning of the jungle. Possibly some dog was baying the faint face of the moon. There was an equal possibility that we had heard the roar of some beast abroad in quest of prey. “Tigers abound,” the Englishman had said. So must snakes in this reptile-breeding undergrowth. A crackling of twigs close beside me sent an electric shock along my spine. I opened my mouth to call to James. He forstalled me.
“Hello!” he whispered. “Say, I’ll get a fever if I sleep in this mud. Let’s try that big tree there.”
It was a gigantic growth for the tropics. The lowest of its wide-spreading branches the Australian could reach from my shoulders. He pulled me up after him and we climbed higher. I sat down astride a great limb, tied my bundle above me, and, leaning against the trunk, sank into a doze.
I was aroused by a blow in the ribs.
“Quit it!” cried James angrily, thumping me again, “What the deuce are you tearing my clothes off for?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but was interrupted by a violent chattering in the branches above, as a band of monkeys scampered away at sound of our voices. They soon returned. For half the night those jabbering, clawing little brutes kept us awake and ended by driving us from the tree entirely. We spent the hours of darkness left, on the ground at its foot, indifferent alike to snakes and tigers.