With every moment the storm increased in fury. So far, it had been wind and thunder and lightning, but no rain. Now the heavens opened and the rain descended in blinding torrents.
Bomba was at a loss as to where to fly for shelter. His surroundings were strange to him. He had slept in a thorn thicket that had protected him from the inroad of wild beasts, but now offered little refuge from the storm. He knew of no cave or native hut in the immediate vicinity.
While he hesitated, there was a rending crash above his head.
He leaped back, but not in time. A tree, as though uprooted by a giant’s hand, crashed to the ground, bearing all before it.
Bomba felt himself flung through the air, was conscious of a piercing pain in the back of his head, and then for a time knew nothing.
How long he lay pinioned beneath the branches of the tree, Bomba did not know. But when he woke again to a knowledge of his surroundings he found that the storm still raged through the jungle. His head ached fiercely and he felt dizzy and sick.
His head was resting in something sticky and soft. Bomba thought at first that it might be blood from his head, for he remembered a terrific blow as he fell.
Both hands were imprisoned by the branches, but after considerable effort he managed to free one of them. This he moved cautiously about to the back of his head. There was a bump on it as big as an egg, but he could discover no gash in the scalp.
His head then was not lying in a pool of blood. It was imbedded in the thick oozy mud of a swamp.
By a great strain he lifted his head a trifle and heard the thick suck of the ooze as it reluctantly released its prey.