Then in the hot noon
when no breath of wind stirred, suddenly the end came. Suddenly that
mighty bole seemed to crumble; suddenly those far-reaching arms were
thrown together as their support failed, gripping at each other like
living things, flogging the air, screaming in their last agony, and with
an awful wailing groan sinking, a tumbled ruin, to the earth.
Silence again, and in the midst of the silence Jeekie's cheerful voice.
"Old tree go flop! Glad he no flop on us, thanks be to Little Bonsa. Get
on, you lazy nigger dog. Who pay you stand there and snivel? Get on or
I blow out your stupid skull," and he brought the muzzle of the
full-cocked, double-barrelled gun into sharp contact with that part of
the terrified porter's anatomy.
Such was the forest. Of their march through it for the first four
days, there is nothing to tell. Its depths seemed to be devoid of
life, although occasionally they heard the screaming of parrots in the
treetops a couple of hundred feet above, or caught sight of the dim
shapes of monkeys swinging themselves from bough to bough. That was in
the daytime, when, although they could not see it, they knew that the
sun was shining somewhere.
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