Samuel Scoville, Jr.

“ Suddenly, through a corner of the jungle thrust the van of a vast army of black ants. Through the woods they moved in lines and regiments and divisions, while little companies deployed here and there on each side of the main guard. Like a stream of dark lava, the army flowed swiftly over the ground. As with human armies, this one was made up of different kinds of soldiers, all of whom had different duties to perform. Most numerous of all were the eyeless workers, about half an inch in length, armed with short, but keen, cutting mandibles. ”

“ It was Hen Pine who finally saved the boy's life. Awakened by the sound of the shots and the shouts of Jud and Pinto, he reached Joe just as one of the fatal coils was half around him. With his bare hands he caught hold of both of the fierce jaws and with one tremendous wrench of his vast arms literally tore them apart. Released from their death grip, Joe rolled to one side, out of danger. The great snake hissed fiercely, and its deadly, lidless eyes glared into those of the man. Slowly, with straining, knotted muscles, Hen wrenched the grim jaws farther and farther apart. ”

“ Suddenly, from far down that trail, sounded a faint, but regular, clicking noise. As it became louder and louder, rising and falling in a regular cadence, Pinto slipped like a snake deeper into the long jungle-grass.
"Lie still for your life," he whispered in Will's ear, so faintly that the boy could scarcely make out the words. Then, in an instant, from out of the jungle not twenty feet away there strode along the dim path a figure of nightmare horror—that of a tall naked man, with gaunt and fleshless arms and legs, great knobs of bone marking his knee and elbow-joints. ”

“ Suddenly all of them ceased and once again the original song burst out.
"That thicket must be chuck-full of birds," whispered Jud. Professor Ditson shook his head.
"It's only one bird," he said, "but the greatest singer of all the world—the white banded mocking bird."
Even as he spoke, the songster itself fluttered up into the air, a brown bird with a white throat, and tail and wings broadly banded with the same color. Up and up it soared, and its notes chimed like a golden bell as its incomparable song drifted down through the moonlight to those listening below. ”

“ This strange track was that of the masked shrew, the smallest mammal in the world, a tiny, blind death, whose doom it is to devour its own weight in flesh and blood every twenty-four hours. Another track showed like a tunnel, with its concave surface stamped with zigzag paw-marks. It was the trail of the blarina shrew, which twisted here and there as if a snake had writhed its way through the powdered snow. Again, all other tracks radiated away from it; for the blarina is braver and bigger and fiercer than its little blood-brother, the masked shrew. ”

“ Just as Professor Ditson, the last of the party to leave the bank, stepped into the stream, there sounded with startling distinctness the same wild chorus which had come from the jungle. Once or twice in a life-time a hunter in South American forests hears the fearsome screech which a jaguar gives when it is fighting for its life or its mate. It was this never-to-be-forgotten sound which the Miranhas had adopted for their war-cry.
Down the slope not three hundred yards away came the hunting pack. Right behind them, running nearly as fast as they, raced a band of some fifty Miranhas warriors. ”

“ We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Like Franklin, too, Lincoln possessed the tact of a true statesman. ”

“ Under the light of Achenar, Canopus, and the other eternal stars which flared through the blackness of the tropical night, they buried her deep at the foot of a vast paradise tree which had towered above the forest hundreds of years before the first white man ever came to South America and whose mighty girth will be standing when the last Indian of that continent has passed to his forgotten fathers. ”

“ There, in the outstretched palm, gleamed and coruscated the green glory of a great oval emerald, cut and polished by some skilful lapidarist perhaps a thousand years ago. Lost for centuries, the gem which had been worshiped by a great nation had once again come to the earth from which it had disappeared.
Three weeks later, Professor Amandus Ditson lay sleeping in a luxurious bedroom on the ground floor of the rambling house of a Spanish friend whom he was visiting in the beautiful, historic, blood-stained city of Lima. In other rooms of the same house slept Will and Jud and Joe. ”

“ As the old dog otter stretched himself out on the kelp-raft, his cylindrical body, all gleaming ebony and silver in the sunlight, showed nearly as long as that of a man, and weighed perhaps a hundred and twenty-five pounds. It was the great otter's pelt, however, that stamped him as the sea king that he was. Lustrous as light on the water, the inner fur had a close pile like velvet and, frosted with long white hairs, showed a tinge of silver-purple gleaming through its long loose folds.
For some time the old dog otter gravely surveyed his mate and his new cub, approvingly. ”

“ That evening, after dinner, Professor Ditson took Jud and the boys out for a walk along the beach which stretched away in front of them in a long white curve under the light of the full moon. The night was full of strange sounds, and in the sky overhead burned new stars and unknown constellations, undimmed even by the moonlight, which showed like snow against the shadows of the jungle. Professor Ditson pointed out to the boys Agena and Bungula, a noble pair of first-magnitude stars never seen in the North, which flamed in the violet-black sky. ”

“ Time and again his great jaws opened and closed, sinking fierce white fangs deep through the skull or spine of some peccary, but at last only a black heaving of the furious wild pigs could be seen. At times the dark, desperate head of the dying tiger thrust its way out, only to fall back, smothered and slashed. Amid a scene of brute rage and fury which even Jud, old hunter as he was, had never imagined before, the little party slipped shudderingly away and hastened back over the trail along which they had come, nor ever stopped until they had reached the refuge of the montaria. ”

“ For the next few days the treasure-hunters followed the narrow, hard-beaten path through stretches of dark jungle and thorny thickets, or found themselves skirting lonely lakes hidden in the very heart of the virgin forest. Everywhere the Trail was omniously clear and hard-trodden. Sometimes they all had that strange knowledge that they were being watched, which human beings who live in the open acquire as well as the wild folk. ”

“ For a long minute they lay flat on their faces as the bridge swung forth and back like a pendulum.
As the gust passed, they heard close at hand the tiger-screech of the Miranhas rushing at headlong speed down the trail as they saw their prey once again escaping. Up the farther slope, crouching low and gripping desperately with twining hands and feet, the fugitives pressed on foot by foot. At the worst places Will felt Hen's mighty arms holding him tight to the swinging ropes, while from ahead Joe risked his life time and again to stretch out a helping hand to his friend. ”

“ He who looks ever into the far future and seeks constantly to know the eternal purposes of life wins to a clearer vision than ordinary men. It was so with Abraham Lincoln. Listen to some of the messages that he has left for us of another generation:
No man is good enough to govern another person without that other's consent. This is a world of compensation. He who would be no slave must be content to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it. ”

“ Suddenly, as he set himself against making the least stir of a muscle, he heard from the jungle through the broken covering of the trap, the same far-reaching whisper of death which had sounded when he was hunting with Pinto. A moment later, with staring eyes, he saw a black stream move sibilantly down the opposite wall of the pit, and realized that the blind black ants of the jungle were upon him—and that there was no escape. ”

“ Its color was the gray-white of the ooze at the bottom of the stream in which it had lain hidden until attracted to the surface by the shadow of the montaria drifting above him. Will awakened at the hoarse shout from Hen just in time to see yawning in front of him a mouth more enormous than he believed any created thing possessed outside of the whale family. It was a full five feet between the yawning jaws, which were circled by a set of small sharp teeth. Even as he sprang back, the monster lunged forward right across the edge of the boat and the jaws snapped shut. ”

“ Again the sky was full of birds. Those last of the day-flyers were the swallow-folk. White-bellied tree swallows; barn swallows, with long forked tails; cliff swallows, with cream-white foreheads; bank and rough-winged swallows, with brown backs—the air was full of their whirling, curving flight. With them went their big brothers, the purple martins, and the night hawks, with their white-barred wings, which at times, as they whirled downward, made a hollow twanging noise. With the flock, too, were the swifts, who sleep and nest in chimneys, and whose winter home no man yet has discovered. ”

“ To the travelers, no other sight could so have plumbed the depths that lay beneath the bridge. For a moment the scientist, sick and giddy, clung to the swaying cables which seemed to stretch tenuous as cobwebs across the sheer blackness of the abyss.
"Come back, Master," called Pinto. "No man can cross that bridge!"
"No man here will live who doesn't cross this bridge," returned the professor, as the wind brought again to their ears the war-cry of the Miranhas. ”

“ Only a fox could have made that long straight line, where every paw-print was stamped in the soft snow as if with a die. From Cold Spring to Darby Creek the long narrow valley belonged to the fox-folk.
Close beside the spring itself, at the very edge of its fringe of bushes, was a deep burrow that ran out into the open field, and yet was so cunningly hidden by a rock and masked by bushes and long grass that few humans ever suspected that a sly, old, gray fox had lived there for a fox-lifetime, or nearly ten years. ”

“ At last, in a little opening among the bushes, the trail ended in a circle of trampled, ridged, and reddened snow. At the very edge of the blood-stains a great X was stamped deep. Farther on was the end of that snow-story—the torn, half-eaten body of the rabbit, which had run a losing race with death. Again, to him who could read the writing on the snow the record was a plain one. The X is the sign and seal of the owl-folk, just as a K is the mark of the hawk-people. On silent, muffled wings, the great horned owl, fiercest of all the sky-pirates, had hunted down poor Cottontail. ”

“ He, in turn, secured a grip on the first skunk's neck, and in a moment the atmosphere was full of flying snow and whirling fur. The teeth of each fighter were so fine and their fur so thick, that neither one could do much damage to the other; but they fought and rolled and chirred and growled, until they looked like a great black-and-white pin-wheel. The contest caught the eyes of an old red fox, who was loping around a ten-mile circle in search of any little unconsidered trifle that might come his way. ”

“ Beyond the dogs stood the men. In their faces showed no pity for the trapped animal, who must fight for his life against such fearful odds.
For a moment the coon looked down impassively at his foes. Then, just as the golden rim of the rising sun showed above the tree-tops, he turned like lightning and sprang out into mid-air, sideways, so that he would land close to the trunk of the tree. As he came through the air, spread out like a huge flying squirrel, his keen claws slashed back and forth as if he were limbering up for action. ”

“ Once more the ever-hungry little mammal claimed the spoils of victory. Only when there was nothing left of the snake but a well-picked skeleton, did he leave the den. Then again he drank deeply, plunged up through the water, and landed after dark on the same little beach from which he had dived days before. As he scurried across an open space in the woods, a dark shadow drifted down from the tree tops and two great wings hovered over him, so muffled by soft feathers that not even the shrew heard a single beat or flutter from them. ”

“ At the sight of the prowling blackbear, all the devilish temper of the thwarted, seeking, brooding bull broke loose. His deep-set, wicked little eyes burned red, and with a roaring bellow he whirled up his vast bulk over the bear. Ordinarily the bear would not have waited for any trouble with a bull-moose in the month of September. To-night, however, he was on his own range. Behind him watched his mate and his cubs. The moose was a stranger and a trespasser. Morever, the blood-hunger had seized upon the bear, and a bear that sees red is one of the most dangerous opponents on earth. ”