something there was!  For the second time he left, without being able to account for the mysterious force that lured him to this gloomy, moon-lit place on the dark, treacherous bank.  In setting out in the stream again he decided to fight off the uncanny, unexplainable feeling that had called him back, but scarcely a stone’s throw from the bank he had the same desire to return,—­a desire that he had never before experienced.  He went again, and looked, and meditated over the thing that he did not understand.

He had not drunk cachassa that day and was consequently quite sober; he had not had fever for two weeks and was in good health physically as well as mentally; he had never so much indulged in the dissipations of civilisation that his nerves had been affected; he had lived all his life in these surroundings and knew no fear of man or beast.  And now, this splendid type of manhood, free and unbound in his thoughts and unprejudiced by superstition, broke down completely and hid his face in his hands, sobbing like a child in a dark room afraid of ghosts.  He had been called to this spot three times without knowing the cause, and now, the mysterious force attracting him, as a magnet does a piece of iron, he was unable to move.  Helpless as a child he awaited his fate.

Luckily three workers from headquarters happened to pass on their way to their homes, which lay not far above the “Creek of Hell,” and when they heard sobbing from the bank they called out.

The hypnotised seringueiro managed to state that he had three times been forced, by some strange power, to the spot where he now was, unable to get away, and that he was deadly frightened.  The rubber-workers, with rifles cocked, approached in their canoe, fully prepared to meet a jaguar, but when only a few yards from their comrade they saw directly under the root where the man was sitting the head of a monstrous boa-constrictor, its eyes fastened on its prey.  Though it was only a few feet from him, he had been unable to see it.

One of the men took good aim and fired, crushing the head of the snake, and breaking the spell, but the intended victim was completely played out and had to lie down in the bottom of the canoe, shivering as if with ague.

The others took pains to measure the length of the snake before leaving.  It was 79 palmas or 52 feet 8 inches.  In circumference it measured 11 palmas, corresponding to a diameter of 28 inches.  Its mouth, they said, was two palmas or sixteen inches, but how they mean this to be understood I do not know.

This event happened while I was living at headquarters.  I had a long talk with Perreira, but could not shake his statement, nor that of the three others; nevertheless, I remained a sceptic as to this alleged charming or mesmeric power of the snakes, at least so far as man is concerned.