"As the tide steadied, this said creek proved to be a smaller river, apparently from the hilly country I had noticed beyond the woods, by the clearness of its current, that showed the pale yellow reflection of the close bamboo-brake on one side, deep down into the light--the huge, sharp, green notched aloe-leaves and fern showing here and there out of it--the close, rank, stifling smell of rotten weeds and fungi giving place to the strange wild scent of the flowers, trailing and twisting in thick snaky coils up the stems on our opposite hand, and across from branch to branch, with showers of crimson and pink blossoms and white stars; still, eager as the ladies were to put foot on land, 'twas no use looking as yet for a spot of room, let alone going farther in. "The cadets were not long in being blown, either; when the midshipman, the bowman, and I, had to relieve them. However, _then_ I could look straight toward Violet Hyde's face, the shade of the scarlet punkah hanging over it, and her soft little straight nose and forehead catching a flickering burst from the leaves as we sheered at times under cover of the bank; while her eyelids, drooping from the glare, gave her bright eyes a half-sleepy sort of violet look, and it was only her lips that let you see how excited she felt. The griffin who had the tiller steering with the judgment of a tailor's 'prentice on a picnic to Twickenham, we came two or three times crash into the twigs of some half-sunk tree; then a blue bird like a heron would rise direct ahead of us, with its tall wet spindle legs and spurs glistening like steel behind it into the light, and a young snake in its sharp bill; or a grey crane rustled out of the cane from overhead, its long wings creaking in the air out of sight. Suddenly, you heard a long chirruping croak from a tree-frog, and the ground ones gave full chorus from farther in, whining and cackling and peep-peep-peeping in one complete rush that died as suddenly away again, like thousands of young turkeys. Then out in the midst of the quiet would come a loud clear wheetle-wheetling note from some curious fowl in an opening, with another of the same to match, dimmer amongst the thick of the bush. However, everything of the kind seemed to sink down with the heat at noon, the very buzz of flies round every dark feather of the cocoas, and the mosquito-hum along the bank, getting fainter; till one _heard_ the heat, as it were, creeping and thrilling down through the woods, with the green light that steeped into both edges of the long creek; every reed, cane, leaf, and twig, seemingly, at last giving it back again with a whispering, hushing crackle, and the broad fans of the palms tingling in it with rays from them, as they trembled before you in the glare, back into the high bundles of knotted and jointed bamboo, with their spiky-tufted crowns.