_What was that?_ Merely, the shrill cry of a parrot. . . . I tried to laugh at my folly, and, as a temporary diversion, I even tried to picture the wet and glistening streets converging on Piccadilly Circus--that symbol of a great civilized city where Man was indeed omnipotent. But the vision would not persist. It became an epitome of vain endeavor. New York, London, Paris, all those huge capitals--what were they? Little blobs of buildings, which did not cover a millionth part of the world's wide surface; mere temporary excrescences on the immobile face of Mother Earth. The jungle was unchanging, cynically indifferent to all but the relentless laws of Nature. It had seen men like me before, travelling blindly and painfully onwards to some ephemeral goal, and now and then it smote at us with its diseases, its lurking animals, its crawling reptiles, and its poisonous vegetation. But still we came. What did these little serious and eager white men seek? It was not food; nor was it mates--as was the custom of the jungle folk. Who were these men, to-day, who came over on their great roaring birds and disguised themselves in the skins of their ancestors? Who was this solitary unit of humanity stumbling onward in the gloom? What did he seek? I looked upwards at the great questioning canopy of green. But I could not answer. My name sounded too tragically inconsequential; my mission so childishly absurd! The day before yesterday, men brought the Bible and medicine to the blacks, and received in exchange their intangible souls. Yesterday, they brought cheap jewelry and deadly firearms, and took away ivory and rubber--and human life. To-day, they came with weird cries and sleep-inducing vapors--and flew away with live and protesting gorillas. To-morrow? . . . Perhaps, they would remove the jungle itself. . . . It was strange that I, George Barnett, late of His Britannic Majesty's Civil Service, should become so psychological. Strange it was that I (who had never found thought of much consequence in my old profession) should now utilize my brains so freely. Was it morbid, or was it natural? . . . I was brought back from the abstract to the real by the sudden appearance of a gigantic snake lying right in the centre of my path. It evidently heard my approach, for it erected its head, slid forward a little, and prepared to strike. At the same moment, I fired--and missed. Not daring to risk another shot, I turned and ran for my life, the hideous thing coming after me with a peculiar half-leaping, half-slithering motion. I ran as I've never run before, with sheer terror lending a miraculous aid to my flying feet, and when I saw an elephant track crossing my line of retreat at right-angles I rounded the corner like the wind. But it was a vain hope. The serpent, with the age-long wisdom of its kind, was not to be hoodwinked in this simple manner. Instead, it cut through the underbrush and thereby gained a good yard.