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"I didn't undo them." Fred gazed at him fiercely, for he had never been spoken to before like this, and he grasped the fact that he was losing the confidence of those who ought to have looked up to him as one who had almost the power of life and death over them. "How came your lianas at liberty, sir?" cried Fred, sternly, as he turned now on Scarlett.
His excitement was shared by the two lads, and the men were questioned again and again, while all joined in searching round the little encampment as far as was possible; and that was a very short distance, for almost directly after the stretch of sand was passed they came upon dense shrubby growth, and beyond this there were the huge forest trees matted together by vines and lianas into an impassable wall, while as far as could be made out there was no trace of any one having tried to force his way through.
The basalt rocks came closer, showing plainly through the breaks in the lianas that grew less thickly on the higher slopes.
Now it is a picnic rendezvous, very dear to Papeete whites and to tourists. C'est la vie." Tahitian women passengers were adorning their heads with wreaths of maiden-hair and rare ferns from the cavern. Great lianas hung down the walls, and these they climbed to reach the exquisite draperies of the chamber.
From the highest branches of these down to the water sweep ribbons of climbing plants of the most diverse and ornamental foliage possible. Creeping convolvuli and others have made use of the slender lianas and hanging air roots as ladders to climb by.
The trees immediately near the edge of the bay were covered with riotous lianas that looped themselves like pythons from limb to limb, and from whose green masses blazing red flowers appeared at intervals like watchful eyes.
The place was a mad riot of thorny undergrowth, laced and bound with vines that were as strong as wire hawsers. The lianas appeared human to us; they lassoed our legs and flung us sprawling upon our faces whenever we tried to quicken our speed.
Only the reader who has seen the virgin forest, with its interlacing lianas, thick as a man's leg the thorns six inches long and sharp as needles can form an idea of the task before us. As we penetrated farther and farther in the selva, the darkness became deeper and deeper.
Black cliffs overhang it, full of the black mouths of caves; great trees overhang the cliffs, and dangle-down lianas; and in one place, about the middle, a big brook pours over in a cascade. Well, there was a boat going by here, with six young men of Falesá, “all very pretty,” Uma said, which was the loss of them.
The oars used in such canoes as ours are made by tying a stout paddle to the end of a long pole by means of woody lianas. The men take their stand on a raised deck, formed by a few rough planks placed over the arched covering in the fore part of the vessel, and pull with their backs to the stern.
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