“Are you hurt?” asked Tom, carrying the limp form over to a grassy place.  There was no answer, the savant’s eyes were closed and he breathed but faintly.

Ned Newton fired two more electric bullets into the still writhing body of the boa.

“I guess he’s all in,” he called to Tom.

“Bless my horseradish!  And so our friend seems to be,” commented Mr. Damon.  “Have you anything with which to revive him, Tom?”

“Yes.  Some ammonia.  See if you can find a little water.”

“I have some in my flask.”

Tom mixed a dose of the spirits which he carried with him, and this, forced between the pallid lips of the scientist, revived him.

“What happened?” he asked faintly as he opened his eyes.  “Oh, yes, I remember,” he added slowly.  “The boa——­”

“Don’t try to talk,” urged Tom.  “You’re all right.  The snake is dead, or dying.  Are you much hurt?”

Professor Bumper appeared to be considering.  He moved first one limb, then another.  He seemed to have the power over all his muscles.

“I see how it happened,” he said, as he sat up, after taking a little more of the ammonia.  “I was following the iguana, and when the big lizard came to a stop, in a little hollow place in the ground, at the foot of those two trees, I leaned over to slip a noose of rope about its neck.  Then I felt myself caught, as if in the hands of a giant, and bound fast between the two trees.”

“It was the big boa that whipped itself around you, as you leaned over,” explained Tom, as Ned came up to announce that the snake was no longer dangerous.  “But when it coiled around you it also coiled around the two trees, you, fortunately slipping between them.  Had it not been that their trunks took off some of the pressure of the coils you wouldn’t have lasted a minute.”

“Well, I was pretty badly squeezed as it was,” remarked the professor.  “I hardly had breath enough left to call to you.  I tried to fight off the serpent, but it was of no use.”

“I should say not!” cried Mr. Damon.  “Bless my circus ring! one might as well try to combat an elephant!  But, my dear professor, are you all right now?”

“I think so—­yes.  Though I shall be lame and stiff for a few days, I fear.  I can hardly walk.”

Professor Bumper was indeed unable to go about much for a few days after his encounter with the great serpent.  He stretched out in a hammock under trees in the camp clearing, and with his friends waited for the possible return of Tolpec and the porters.

Ned and Tom made one or two short hunting trips, and on these occasions they kept a lookout in the direction the Indian had taken when he went away.

“For he’s sure to come back that way—­if he comes at all,” declared Ned; “which I am beginning to doubt.”

“Well, he may not come,” agreed Tom, who was beginning to lose some of his first hope.  “But he won’t necessarily come from the same direction he took.  He may have had to go in an entirely different way to get help.  We’ll hope for the best.”