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 
