CHAPTER VI

The tree had two openings, a large one half a yard from the ground, and a smaller one, somewhere about the height of the first story of a town house. Hardly had Mea thrown the burning branches into the lower one than large bats began to fly out of the top one, and, blinded by the sun, they circled around the tree, screaming as loud as they could. But the real master of the house soon wriggled out of the lower opening, and it proved to be an enormous boa-constrictor, which, though apparently still half asleep, had d…