Gavin stretched himself out at full length on the long box, and prepared to take a nap.  First he reached toward the next box—­the one under which Davy had told him the key was hidden--and moved it an inch or so to make certain it was not full enough to cause him any especial effort in case he should not be released until next day and should have need of the key.  Then he shut his eyes, and let himself drift toward slumber.

It was perhaps two hours later when he was roused from a light doze by hearing something strike the concrete floor of his prison. not six feet from his head.  The thing had fallen with a slithering, uneven sound, such as might be made by the dropping of a short length of rope.

Brice sat up.  He noted that the room was no longer light enough to see across.  And he glanced in the direction of the window.  Its narrow space was blocked by something.  And as he looked he heard a second object slither to the floor.

“Some one’s dropping things down here through that ventilator,” he conjectured.

And at the same moment a third fall sounded, followed almost at once by a fourth.  Then, for a second, the window space was clear, only to be blocked again as the person outside returned to his post.  And in quick succession three more objects were sent slithering down to the floor.  After which the window was cleared once more, and Brice could hear receding steps.

But he gave no heed to the steps.  For as the last of the unseen things had been slid through the aperture. another sound had focused all his attention, and had sent queer little quivers up his spine.

The sound had been a long-drawn hiss.

And Gavin Brice understood.  Now he knew why the softly falling bodies had slithered so oddly down the short distance between window and floor.  And he read aright the slippery crawling little noises that had been assailing his ears.

The unseen man outside had thrust through the ventilator not less than seven or eight snakes, carried thither, presumably, in bags.

Crouching on his long box Gavin peered about him.  Faintly against the dense gray of the shadowy floor. he could see thick ropelike forms twisting sinuously to and fro, as if exploring their new quarters or seeking exit.  More than once. as these chanced to cross one another’s path, that same long-drawn hiss quavered out into the dark silences.

And now Brice’s nostrils were assailed by a sickening smell as of crushed cucumbers.  And at the odor his fists tightened in new fear.  For no serpents give off that peculiar odor. except members of the pit-viper family.

“They’re not rattlesnakes,” he told himself.  “For a scared or angry rattler would have this room vibrating with his whirr.  We’re too far south for copperheads.  The—­the only other pit-viper I ever heard of in Florida is the—­cotton-mouth moccasin!”

At the realization he was aware of a wave of physical terror that swept him like a breath of ice.