PROWLER OF THE NIGHT 125 



can jungle, the greatest of all the spotted cats, 

 the jaguar. 



By the light of a half moon where its pale 

 wan rays flooded a precipitous slope there 

 showed a cavernous gulch, falling suddenly to a 

 great depth. At the foot of the dark scarps of 

 horizontal rocks that rimmed the tableland wound 

 a freshet over a boulder-strewn bed. The ravine 

 for the most part was filled with a choked tangle 

 of jungle bamboo thickets that were rent by huge 

 and fantastic rock gorges, forming ghostly, 

 damp and inky-black caverns, of innumerable 

 sizes and shapes ; a fitting place for the uncanny 

 creatures that dwell therein. 



Over a long slant of moss-grown, slimy rock 

 wriggled a snake. It was the bushmaster, the 

 largest and most poisonous of them all. His 

 diamond-patterned body, nine feet in length, 

 stopped and poised for a moment at the edge, 

 while some eighteen inches of his pink and brown 

 form hung over the brink. Finally he made the 

 descent of some five feet of sheer drop, where 

 he coiled at the edge of a pool in the rank grass 

 to doze and await the coming of some small ani- 

 mal to drink. 



The big black wax palms, the quiet, unruffled 

 pool, the white moonlight, the inky shadows ; and 



