These she gathered and piled far in the stern of the
boat, until at last, to her immense relief, she saw the bow rise
gently from the mud of the bank and the stern drift slowly with
the current until it again lodged a few feet farther down-stream.
Jane found that by running back and forth between the bow and stern
she could alternately raise and lower each end of the boat as she
shifted her weight from one end to the other, with the result that
each time she leaped to the stern the canoe moved a few inches
farther into the river.
As the success of her plan approached more closely to fruition she
became so wrapped in her efforts that she failed to note the figure
of a man standing beneath a huge tree at the edge of the jungle
from which he had just emerged.
He watched her and her labours with a cruel and malicious grin upon
his swarthy countenance.
The boat at last became so nearly free of the retarding mud and of
the bank that Jane felt positive that she could pole it off into
deeper water with one of the paddles which lay in the bottom of
the rude craft. With this end in view she seized upon one of these
implements and had just plunged it into the river bottom close to
the shore when her eyes happened to rise to the edge of the jungle.
As her gaze fell upon the figure of the man a little cry of terror
rose to her lips.
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