228 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



the insects which had been frightened into flight. 

 At one time, three of these dropped down to 

 perch on my hammock, nervous, watchful, and 

 alert, waiting but a moment before darting after 

 some ill-fated moth or grasshopper which, in its 

 great panic, had escaped one danger only to fall 

 an easy victim to another. For a little while, the 

 twittering and chirping of these camp-follow- 

 ers, these feathered profiteers, was brought back 

 to me on the wind; and when it had died away, 

 I took up my work again in a glade in which 

 no voice of insect reached my ears. The hunt- 

 ing ants had done their work thoroughly. 



And so it comes about that by day or by night 

 the hammock carries with it its own reward to 

 those who have learned but one thing — that there 

 is a chasm between pancakes and truffles. It is 

 an open door to a new land which does not fail 

 of its promise, a land in which the prosaic, the 

 ordinary, the everyday have no place, since 

 they have been shouldered out, dethroned, by a 

 new and competent perspective. The god of 

 hammocks is unfailingly kind, just, and gener- 

 ous to those who have found pancakes wanting 

 and have discovered by inspiration, or what-not, 

 that truffles do not grow in back-yards to be 



