“We’ve got our work cut out for us, then! We’ll camp and get something to eat, and then wait until the clouds come before setting out. Meanwhile we’ll have to find a upas vine, or something like it. Either of you boys know strychnine when you see it?” They shook their heads. Botany was out of their line. “Got to know ’most everything if you’re a scientist,” grinned the curator, deprecatingly. “Well, the species we want is _S. tieute_, native of all this archipelago, the upas vine. It’s a climbing shrub, five-leaved, with little bunches of berries in a leathery rind like a small dried orange.” “I think I’ve noticed one or two like that, sir, myself, going through the jungle,” said Dwight, reminiscently. “Climbs all over larger trees, doesn’t it?” He sketched a leaf on a bit of rock as he spoke. “Yep. That’s him. You and Sadok scout around for one while Nick and I get ready some eats,” said the curator. “You may also find the upas _tree_, which is of the bread-fruit family, but I doubt it. Never heard of it south of Java. Look for a tall tree a hundred feet high, with lanceolate leaves and berries in a drooping cluster. Both are used for poisoning arrows and darts, from the Philippines south.” Dwight arranged a lory call for Sadok, in case either of them should need the other, and they separated, each vanishing into the lower jungle. Dwight walked along, searching the jungle growth with keen eyes. Gradually his course led him around the flank to the south and into a deep ravine, with great trees dropping down the slopes below him into the depths. It was impossible to see far, in here, so he climbed up a small tree and looked out. The ravine led up the mountain side, with all the jungle spread out like a map on its flanks. Searching carefully each giant trunk, he at length spied one overgrown with a profusion of some vine that looked promising, and, marking it, he set out. In ten minutes he was close enough to the vine to examine it more carefully. The reddish bark, the five-fingered leaf, looked as if it might be one of that famous family of strychnine trees that extends all around the tropics, from India through the archipelago, to South America and across Africa. Dwight thrilled with a primal, almost superstitious fear as he looked at this sinister representative of its race. It was more deadly than a cobra, if it could bite you! All the stories he had ever heard of the poisonous air that surrounds the strychnine trees came to him; and that fabled Valley of Death in Java, grown thick with upas trees in which nothing can live, came to mind. He kept his distance from the dreaded vine, respectfully, and was about to try to reach Sadok with a call, when voices coming through the jungle arrested him. He sank into the undergrowth and watched through its green depths.