Look where he would all round were tree-ferns and palms with long drooping creepers, and a blaze of brilliant orchids.

Smoking-room, house, England, all were gone, and he sat on a settee in the heart of a virgin forest of the Amazon.

It was no mere optical delusion or trick.

He could see the hot steam rising from the tropical undergrowth, the heavy drops falling from the huge green leaves, the very grain and fibre of the rough bark which clothed the trunks.

Even as he gazed a green mottled snake curled noiselessly over a branch above his head, and a bright-coloured paroquet broke suddenly from amid the foliage and flashed off among the tree-trunks.