To go back was useless, the passage led only to that dismal cañon, and even had we wished to do so we could not return. Already, dozens of the great diamond-marked snakes were coiled with threatening, swaying heads and vibrating rattles behind us. To go forward seemed equally impossible. We could not even remain where we were, for at any instant a serpent might appear from the crevices beneath our feet. Yet to reach the opening, to gain the exit to the tunnel that now was clearly before us, we must cross a dozen yards of the serpents’ den. Whichever way we turned, we seemed doomed to a terrible death. Then a seeming miracle happened. There was a sharp squeal, dirt and pebbles rattled down from above, and the next second a peccary tumbled into the tunnel. Snorting, squealing, leaping about, the angry, terrified creature dashed hither and thither, utterly unmindful of our presence, every bristle on his thick neck on end, his tusks clashing, his wicked eyes gleaming, froth drooling from his upcurled lips. The deadly enemy of all snakes, fearless in attacking the most venomous serpents, the wild pigs or peccaries of the American jungles will go out of their way to kill snakes and seem to go absolutely mad when they are near them. And this peccary had accidentally, or possibly intentionally, slipped into a den of snakes. In a perfect frenzy he dashed at every snake in sight, moving with incredible speed, slashing at them with his razor-edged tusks, leaping upon them with his sharp-pointed hoofs. In less time than it takes to tell it, the place was filled with dead and dying, mangled and headless serpents, and those remaining alive had their attentions fully occupied with the maddened pig and his insatiable lust to kill. Springing forward, we reached the opening, and grasping roots, digging our toes and hands into the rotten rock, we scrambled up and drew ourselves panting upon the ground under the forest trees. * * * * * [Illustration: Unmindful, the peccary dashed back and forth among the group of poisonous snakes] * * * * * For a time the grunts and squeals of the peccary came from the depths of the pit, but gradually they ceased and, crawling to the verge of the hole, I peered down. But the creature to whom we owed our lives had vanished. Perhaps he knew another way out, perhaps he had dashed down the tunnel to the waterfall and had scrambled up by some narrow trail that only a peccary could follow. But to the chief there was but one explanation of the pig’s opportune arrival and its disappearance as soon as we had been saved. To his primitive mind, the peccary was the direct instrument of Kukulcan, a god or spirit in porcine form. Plucking a sharp thorn from a nearby vine, he pierced his tongue, smeared the blood from the wound upon a pebble and cast it into the rattlesnakes’ den. He had paid his debt, had made a blood sacrifice to his gods.