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He had no couide him, and he needed none He knew the woods by heart The mysterious line beyond which scarcely an artu tree was to be found The long strip of ular sheet of it a hundred yards broad, and reaching frooon The clearings, sorew knee-deep Then he caetation here had burst into a riot All sorts of great sappy stalks of unknown plants barred the way and tangled the foot; and there were boggy places into which one sank horribly Pausing to wipe one's brow, the stalks and tendrils one had beaten down, or beaten aside, rose up and closed together,one a prisoner almost as closely surrounded as a fly in amber

All the noontides that had ever fallen upon the island seemed to have left some of their heat behind them here The air was damp and close like the air of a laundry; and the mournful and perpetual buzz of insects filled the silence without destroying it

A hundred h the place to-day; afor the road, you would find none--the vegetation would have closed in as water closes when divided

This was the haunt of the jug orchid--a veritable jug, lid and all

Raising the lid you would find the jug half filled ater

Sole up above, between two trees, you would see a thing like a bird corew here as in a hothouse All the trees--the few there were--had a spectral and miserable appearance

They were half starved by the voluptuous growth of the gigantic weeds

If one had ination one felt afraid in this place, for one felt not alone At any ht be touched on the elbow by a hand reaching out froinative and fearless as he was It took hih, and then, at last, caoon between the tree-boles

He would have rowed round in the dinghy, only that at low tide the shallows of the north of the island were a bar to the boat's passage

Of course he ht have rowed all the way round by way of the strand and reef entrance, but that would have meant a circuit of six oon edge it was about eleven o'clock in the , and the tide was nearly at the full