water into the roarin' jumble some hours had gone--the tide had flowed and turned, and the old tree, with me on it, hanging like a withered apple, had floated miles. I must have been drowned over and over, and reg'lar pickled with salt. I tell you it was lonesome out there on the sea--and wet." "It was a wonderful escape, Uncle." "But it warn't over. Bymby the tide turned again, and the tree made again for the shore, where the fighting was going on jes' the same from the roar, and when the sun broke I saw we would strike the mouth of the river again. I dunno, sonny, how it is, but it seemed to me the ole sea was entering into the fight, for there was a sort of rush in the great heaving masses that began to pile in out of the blue, and when I came near the beat of the surf where the sea was all red, the breaker that carried the tree on his round back rose higher and higher, as he swept on until he reached the flood water, when he let the head of him curl and plunge with a force that swept everything away, and in the wall of his foam we were shot right into the river. That's when I was drowned again; and when I came to I found we were settled in the still centre of a great circle of waters under the left bank, outer the main current. Everything that came into that circle went roun' and roun' till it came gently into the centre, to drift up against the big tree. Already there were three goats against the tree, legs up, an' a sheep were drifting up, while in the circle sailin' roun' was a straw hat and a pair of trousers. On the tree there was fifteen snakes--all alive, but sluggish, mostly puff-adders, with some long yeller boomslangs, and three or four ugly looking black snakes that must er come way down 200 miles from the karoo veld. While I was looking at these ugly lodgers coiled round the branch, there was a swirl in the water, and the sheep that were drifting along suddenly went under. 'Twas a shark took him. That made things lively, but when three more sharks come up, and after eating the goats, the straw hat, and the trousers began butting at the tree with their shovel noses, I felt there was a lot of excitement in this world if you only look for it patiently. The rolling of the tree stirred the snakes, and the whole fifteen of them began crawling up. If there'd been two I'd kicked 'em off, but being so many I sot and took 'em. When they had settled down again there was one round my neck, a yeller boomslang, making a very fine collar, there were a pair of black snakes on each of my arms, a brown boomslang round my waist, and no less'n six big puff-adders coiled about my legs. I tell you I kept my mouth shut less one should crawl in by mistake, an' if my hair hadn't been so scant and wet it would ha' stood up straight." "That was a tight fix, Uncle."