In Search of an Unknown Race — page 77: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

VAN. 67 Thicker and thicker grew the hazy atmosphere, yet there were no gathering storm clouds, neither the distant signal of thunder. A strange and unearthly stillness was brooding over the face of nature. The parrots and lories had ceased their perpetual chatter of love. or warfare in the tree tops. The distant bellowing of howling monkeys, which can be heard almost any hour of the twenty- four, had died into silence. Even the roar of the far off waterfall had a curiously subdued sound—or so at least it seemed to Van's overwrought and excited nerves. ‘‘If there’s going to be a thunder tempest I ought to be looking for a place of shelter,” he told himself. Yet he could see no chance of cover excepting the trees themselves, and a tall tree is hardly a safe refuge ina tropic thunder shower. A deep yet distant rumble, which, strangely enough, seemed to come from beneath rather than overhead, reached Van's ears. Still there was no heavy gloom, such as generally presages the thunder storm. Again and again he heard the sound, sometimes protracted, sometimes in volleys like distant artillery. If he had been almost anywhere excepting in the heart of an unexplored tropical country, Van might have thought a battle was going on miles away. As it was, he hardly knew wha? to think. Suddenly, a sullen roar, that came from the very bowels of the earth, almost eaused his closely cut hair to erect itself like the often quoted quills of the fretful porcupine. According to the brief record I find in Van’s note- book, there is nosuch terrifying sound in nature as that GEoOmicbdoo HAE