Do as I tell you. It--it may bite you, if you stir."
Ben felt the creature as the boy had done. He lay shivering.
Slowly the great insect turned and made its way from the sailor's neck
to the flooring, then up the side of the boat. Ralph, seizing a rope's
end, struck a furious blow, but missed. With lightning-like speed the
spider ran up the side of the boat, sprang upon the water where it
floated like a feather, and pushed towards shore.
But Ben had seized an oar and now came down with a splash that sent a
shower of spray about and momentarily blinded them both.
"There! Look yonder, Ben!" cried Ralph. "Confound the luck!"
The spider was swiftly crawling up the bank, where it quickly
disappeared beneath a tussock.
"That beats all the creatures I ever seen," said Ben. "He must be the
great grandfather of all the spiders hereabout."
Mr. Duff, also awakened by the noise, now suggested that it was time
they were going on. While proceeding up stream Ralph related his own
and Ben's experience with the spider, whereat the mate laughed heartily.
"I am familiar with the species," said he. "True, they do look scary
enough, but, strange to say, they are perfectly harmless. Instead of
teeth, their mouth is supplied with a kind of suction apparatus by
which they suck the blood from smaller insects. But they cannot bite,
nor is their touch poisonous. There are other, smaller kinds of
spiders about here, however, whose bite is fatal.
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