A JUNGLE BEACH 97 



shorewards, the taut liana strand was again 

 crowded with a mass of passing hfe — a maze of 

 vines and creepers, whose tendrils and suckers 

 reached and curled and pressed onward, fighting 

 for gangway to shore, through days and weeks, 

 as the animal life which preceded them had made 

 the most of seconds and minutes. 



The half -circle of exposed raw bank became 

 in its turn the center of a myriad activities. 

 Great green kingfishers began at once to bur- 

 row; tiny emerald ones chose softer places up 

 among the wreckage of wrenched roots; wasps 

 came and chopped out bits for the walls and par- 

 titions of their cells; spiders hung their cobwebs 

 between ratlines of rootlets; and hummingbirds 

 promptly followed and plucked them from their 

 silken nets, and then took the nets to bind their 

 own tiny air-castles. Finally, other interests in- 

 tervened, and like Jennie and Robert, I 

 gradually forgot the tree that fell without an 

 echo. 



In the jungle no action or organism is sep- 

 arate, or quite apart, and this thing which came 

 to the three of us suddenly at midnight led by 

 devious means to another magic phase of the 

 shore. 



