“No; these hollow baobabs have green bark on the inside as well as out. Funny thing, that! We’d have to keep a fire going a long time to burn through.”
“Yet it would burn in time?”
“Yes; but we’re not going to–”
“Then why not burn through the trunk of one of those small trees, instead of chopping it down?”
“By–heck, Miss Jenny, you’ve got an American headpiece! Come on. Sooner we get the thing started, the better.”
Neither Winthrope nor Miss Leslie was reluctant to leave the vicinity of the carcasses. They followed close after Blake, around the monstrous bole of the baobab. A little beyond it stood a group of slender trees, whose trunks averaged eight inches thick at the base. Blake stopped at the second one, which grew nearest to the seaward side of the cleft.
“Here’s our ladder,” he said. “Get some firewood. Pound the bushes, though, before you go poking into them. May be snakes here.”
“Snakes?–oh!” cried Miss Leslie, and she stood shuddering at the danger she had already incurred.
The fire had burnt itself out on a bare ledge of rock between them and the baobab, and the clumps of dry brush left standing in this end of the cleft were very suggestive of snakes, now that Blake had called attention to the possibility of their presence.
He laughed at his hesitating companions. “Go on, go on! Don’t squeal till you’re bit. Most snakes hike out, if you give them half a chance. Take a stick, each of you, and pound the bushes.”