But Nigel’s matches were as wet as those of the hermit.  So were those of the professor.  Luckily Moses carried the old-fashioned flint and steel, with which, and a small piece of tinder, a spark was at last kindled, but as they were about to apply it to a handful of dry bamboo scrapings, an extra spirt of rain extinguished it.  For an hour and more they made ineffectual attempts to strike a light.  Even the cessation of the rain was of no avail.

“Vat must ve do now?” asked the professor in tones that suggested a wo-begone countenance, though there was no light by which to distinguish it.

“Grin and bear it,” said Nigel, in a voice suggestive of a slight expansion of the mouth—­though no one could see it.

“Dere’s nuffin’ else left to do,” said Moses, in a tone which betrayed such a very wide expansion that Nigel laughed outright.

“Hah! you may laugh, my yoong frond, hot if zee tigers find us out or zee elephants trample on us, your laughter vill be turned to veeping.  Vat is zat?  Is not zat vonderful?”

The question and exclamation were prompted by the sudden appearance of faint mysterious lights among the bushes.  That the professor viewed them as unfriendly lights was clear from the click of his rifle-locks which followed.

“It is only phosphoric light,” explained Van der Kemp.  “I have often seen it thus in electric states of the atmosphere.  It will probably increase—­meanwhile we must seat ourselves on our boxes and do the best we can till daylight.  Are you there, boys?”

This question, addressed to the bearers in their native tongue, was not answered, and it was found, on a feeling examination, that, in spite of leeches, tigers, elephants, and the whole animal creation, the exhausted porters had flung themselves on the wet ground and gone to sleep while their leaders were discussing the situation.

Dismal though the condition of the party was, the appearances in the forest soon changed the professor’s woe into eager delight, for the phosphorescence became more and more pronounced, until every tree-stem blinked with a palish green light, and it trickled like moonlight over the ground, bringing out thick dumpy mushrooms like domes of light.  Glowing caterpillars and centipedes crawled about, leaving a trail of light behind them, and fireflies darting to and fro peopled the air and gave additional animation to the scene.

In the midst of the darkness, thus made singularly visible, the white travellers sat dozing and nodding on their luggage, while the cries of metallic-toned horned frogs and other nocturnal sounds peculiar to that weird forest formed their appropriate lullaby.

But Moses neither dozed nor nodded.  With a pertinacity peculiarly his own he continued to play a running accompaniment to the lullaby with his flint and steel, until his perseverance was rewarded with a spark which caught on a dry portion of the tinder and continued to burn.  By that time the phosphoric lights had faded, and his spark was the only one which gleamed through intense darkness.