"My box and my net! but surely not my spectacles!" almost shrieked the excited entomologist.
"Yes, and your spectacles as well!" added Mrs. Weldon mercilessly; "I am glad you have reminded me of another means of reducing you to obedience!"
The triple penalty of which he was thus warned had the effect of keeping him from wandering away for the best part of the next hour, but he was soon once more missing from the ranks; he was manifestly incorrigible; the deprivation of box, net, and spectacles would, it was acknowledged, be utterly without avail to prevent him from rambling. Accordingly it was thought better to let him have his own way, especially as Hercules volunteered to keep his eye upon him, and to endeavour to guard the worthy naturalist as carefully as he would himself protect some precious
[Illustration: The way across the forest could scarcely be called a path.]
specimen of a lepidoptera. Further anxiety on his account was thus put to rest.
In spite of Harris's confident assertion that they were little likely to be molested by any of the nomad Indians, the whole company rejoiced in feeling that they were well armed, and they resolved to keep in a compact body. The way across the forest could scarcely be called a path; it was, in fact, little more than the track of animals, and progress along it was necessarily very slow; indeed it seemed impossible, at the rate they started, to accomplish more than five or six miles in the course of twelve hours.
The weather was beautifully fine; the sun ascended nearly to the zenith, and its rays, descending almost perpendicularly, caused a degree of heat which, as Harris pointed out, would have been unendurable upon the open plain, but was here pleasantly tempered by the shelter of the foliage.
Most of the trees were quite strange to them. To an experienced eye they were such as were remarkable more for their character then for their size. Here, on one side, was the bauhinia, or mountain ebony; there, on the other, the molompi or pterocarpus, its trunk exuding large quantities of resin, and of which the strong light wood makes excellent oars or paddles; further on were fustics heavily charged with colouring matter, and guaiacums, twelve feet in diameter, surpassing the ordinary kind in magnitude, yet far inferior in quality.
Dick Sands kept perpetually asking Harris to tell him the names of all these trees and plants.
"Have you never been on the coast of South America before?" replied Harris, without giving the explicit information that was sought.