Part of it was intersected with deep pools, in which he had to wade, sometimes to the waist. Other sections were comparatively free from water, but deep in mud.
But Bomba knew the swamp as he knew the jungle, knew how to keep a reasonably straight course through the pathless waste and how to avoid the deeper and more dangerous parts.
He had gone about halfway across the dismal place when he came upon a sight that chilled the blood in his veins. Used as he was to the presence of all sorts of reptiles in the jungle, and especially in the ygapo, he was filled with a sensation of loathing and disgust as he viewed the scene before him.
In a shallow, muddy pool, about thirty feet in front of him, he saw a mass of writhing snakes, gray in color like the mud in which they wallowed.
“Sucurujus!” muttered Bomba, as he saw that the group embraced scores of the dreaded anacondas of the Amazon.
They were of all sizes, some of them six or seven feet in length, others three times as long.
They seemed at first to take no notice of Bomba. Most of them were sleeping, some with their bodies half-submerged beneath the lukewarm, shallow ooze. Others had crawled upon the bodies of their comrades, while still others lay lazily on the borders of the pool, basking in the sun.
Lucky for him, thought Bomba, that he had not been crossing the ygapo after the setting of the sun had bathed the swamp in darkness. To have stepped into that crawling mass would have meant certain and horrible death.
Bomba hated the anaconda more than he did any other denizen of the jungle. That hate dated back to the time he had been attacked by one of the reptiles and Casson had fired the rifle, which, though it frightened away the anaconda, had had such dire results to poor Casson himself.
His hand fell on the butt of his revolver, which he had taken care to load again while he was in the little native hut, after he had buried Tatuc. It was a tempting target that offered itself to him.