flickering about the blunt nose.  These sights, and the sudden snorts from unseen beasts, bred in him a growing feeling of uneasiness, which in turn weakened his powers of reasoning, so that he blundered hither and thither in a sort of reckless fury, until he went flat, face downwards, in black mud, that gripped him at every point.  If he had struggled he would have been hopelessly bogged, but luckily he recovered his wits, and set himself slowly to extricate himself.  His left foot was in up to the knee, and his left arm was sinking each moment, when he steadied himself and drew his knife.  Beaching out, he cut a swathe of reeds, drew them towards him with the knife-blade, packed them under his chin and breast, then rolled over on to this firmer support, after a strong and steady pull.  Repeating the performance, he managed to get one knee on to a bedding of reeds, then with one violent effort freed himself and reached hard ground.

This incident shook him up so, that coming, after another effort, to the open where he had left the buck, he gave up the struggle, seeing that he must think of some other plan if he wished to get alive out of this prison.

First he rested until his strength came back, then he cleaned his mud-covered rifle, and scraped the black ooze off his clothes with the knife.  Then he heard a murmur in the reeds—­a snap, then a rustle; a long pause, then a rustling again.  He stood up with rifle ready, and he saw a reed shake about ten yards away, then heard it snap.  He shouted, and the rustling ceased, to break out after an interval on the other side.  Again it was resumed in the front, and in a little while it seemed to him that the reeds were alive with the stealthy rustlings of beasts and reptiles, all moving towards him.  A reed bent again a little way off, and he fired in the direction.  There was a crash and a growl, followed by a peculiar moaning from the opposite side.  From somewhere deep in the sea of green there came the hoarse bellow of a bull crocodile.  Nothing now could have induced him to enter that bewildering labyrinth again, and he looked about with a shudder, for the day was sinking to its close, and the night would soon be upon him.  There was only one thing that could protect him in the night, and that was fire.  With a feverish energy, regardless now of the rustlings about his little island, he began to cut the tallest of the reeds that were hard and sapless, and these he banked in six heaps round the base of the mound; and when the task was done he reared a bigger pile in the centre as a reserve.

Then the black of the night swept over the reeds quick almost as the shadow of a cloud, and with the dark came a sad rustling, as of a thousand whisperings.  It was still and not still.  Up in the sky was the quietness of a still night, the stars watching and brooding over the silence; but down below, in and out of the miles and miles of avenues, stretching every way through the millions of smooth gleaming stems, came a whispering as if creatures were moving tip-toe, moving up nearer and nearer, treading carefully, watching and listening.  An owl brushed like a shadow overhead, and his loud “whoo-whoo” floated away in sadness and sorrow.