CHAPTER vi

SAINT LOUP with its inexhaustible sunshine, its
port, its wooded hills, and its beach with the safe
and very excellent bathing, was a happy and pleasant
place for children. Their school over, Christophe
and Jan would set forth side by side on a voyage of
discovery, since now that they possessed strong and
active legs they were finding the world a constant
adventure,
And 'true it was that those sun-warmed hillsides
teemed with a host of exciting creatures, for there
the large ants filed into their castles, or marched out
upon gravely contrived expeditions; and there the
lizards streaked through the rocks; and there the
slow-moving, knightly beetles displayed the bronze
and green of their armour. But there also, the cou-
leuvres — those innocuous snakes which are yet of
such disconcerting proportions — were for ever giving
themselves away by their rustlings and wrigglings
and lengthy uncoiiings; or, worse still, by heaving
across the paths — the couleuvres are most unintelli-
gent reptiles.
Despite their deep and enduring affection, the
cousins would not infrequently quarrel, for Jan
always wanted to take the lead and when opposed he
would lose his temper; but their bitterest source of
disagreement, at this time, undoubtedly lay in the
couleuvres. Jan possessed a boy's hot instinct to kill,