"Here was loop of creeper with a tendril pendant from a node."

What is a tendril?

"He closed his eyes, raised his head and breathed in gently

with flared nostrils, assessing the current of warm air for information."

What is the definition of assessing?

"The silence of the forest was more oppressive than the heat, and at

this hour of the day there was not even the whine of insects."

What does oppressive mean?

"He was down like a sprinter, his nose only a few inches from the humid earth."

Define humid

"Jack himself shrank at this cry with a hiss

of indrawn breath, and for a minute became less a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees."

What does furtive mean?

"The whole space was walled with dark aromatic bushes, and was a bowl of heat and light.'

What do think aromatic means?

"The tree trunks and the creepers that festooned them lost themselves in a green dusk thirty feet above him,"

What is the definition of festooned?

"Jack himself shrank at this cry with a hiss of indrawn breath, and for a minute became less a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees."

What does furtive mean?

"The littluns watched him inscrutably over double handfuls of ripe fruit."

What is the meaning of inscrutably?