There was a twinkle, a whirr, and a sense of motion. The young artist
gazed about him in absolute amazement. 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. Robert gazed around, speechless with surprise, and finally
turned upon his host a face in which curiosity was not un-mixed with a
suspicion of fear.
"People have been burned for less, have they not?" cried Raffles Haw
laughing heartily. "Have you had enough of the Amazon? What do you say
to a spell of Egypt?"
Again the whirr, the swift flash of passing objects, and in an instant a
huge desert stretched on every side of them, as far as the eye could
reach.
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