After supper the hunting party put on stout boots, coming well above their knees, in case of lurking snakes, and armed with rifles started out after the ocelot. Frank and Harry were both pretty good shots, having had a good deal of experience at their father’s camp in the Adirondacks in the days before he became a planter. Billy Barnes had never had a rifle in his hand before, but he didn’t say so. He opined that to shoot all you had to do was to look steadily at the object aimed at and then, pull the trigger.
“I think we’d better try for him over by Bread-Fruit Spring, sir,” said the young overseer as the party, as quietly as possible, sallied out.
“A good suggestion, Blakely,” replied Mr. Chester.
“Do they eat bread-fruit?” inquired Billy.
“No, but they drink water, Mr. Barnes,” replied Mr. Chester; “now, don’t let’s have any talking or we shall have our night’s work for nothing.”
Following Mr. Chester’s directions the party spread out in a fan-shape, as they neared the spring, and it was agreed that they should gradually draw in the ends of this “fan” as they neared the spot where they expected to find the ocelot. If any one got lost they were to shout or fire their rifle.
In pursuance of this plan the party carefully tiptoed along, stopping every now and again to listen carefully. Billy Barnes was far out to the left of the rest of the party and as they got deeper into the mysterious shadows of the tropical forest his heart began to beat a little faster than usual. The moon shone down through the immense tree-tops in a few patches, but outside of these circles of light-illuminated spots the jungle was as black as an unlighted cathedral.
Every time a creeper brushed against his face, Billy remembered all he had ever read of huge snakes that hung in trees and crushed people to death with their terrible constricting folds. Then, too, occasionally a sleeping monkey, disturbed by a bad dream or some preying night animal, would start off through the branches with a screech that sounded horribly human. Not for the world would Billy have let the boys or their father know that he was filled with a great longing for human company, but he devoutly wished he was back at the comfortable hacienda.
“A nice finish for the Planet’s special correspondent,” he mused. “William Barnes, Crushed to Death by a Boa Constrictor”—b-r-r-r—“that would look well in a head, wouldn’t it?”
Suddenly, as Billy emerged from a dark shadow cast by a huge tree with immense buttress-like roots, the space between any one of which would have served as a barn for a horse and buggy, he saw in the patch of white moonlight right ahead of him a sight that made his scalp tighten and his blood run chill.