"Or a puma!"
"Maybe that, sir; or he may have come suddenly upon a deer as gave him a dig with its horns. Here, let"s get on back to camp as quickly as we can."
"But he may not be there," cried Rob excitedly, as he looked round among the densely packed trees. "Let"s try and find some track by which he has gone."
"That"s what I"ve been trying to do, and couldn"t find one, sir. If he"s been wounded, somehow he"d nat"rally make back for the hut, so as to find us and get help. Come along."
"Oh, Shaddy, we oughtn"t to have left him. We ought to have kept together."
"No good to tell me that, Mr Rob, sir; I feel it now, but I did it all for the best. There, sir, it"s of no use to stay here no longer. Come on, and we may hit upon his backward trail."
Rob gave another wild look round, and then joined Shaddy, who was carefully studying the position of the sun, where a gleam came through the dense foliage high above their heads, and lightened the deep green twilight.
"That"s about the course," he muttered, as he gave the iguana a hitch over to his right shoulder. "Now then, Mr Rob, sir, let"s make a swift pa.s.sage if we can, and hope for the best. Pah! Look at the flies already after the meat. No keeping anything long here."
The remark struck Rob as being out of place at such a time, but he was fain to recall how he had made speeches quite as incongruous, so he followed his companion in silence, trusting to him implicitly, and wondering at the confidence with which he pressed on in one direction, with apparently nothing to guide him. In fact, all looked so strange and undisturbed that Rob at last could not contain himself.
"Mr Brazier cannot have been anywhere here, Shaddy," he cried excitedly. "Two wild beasts must have been fighting."
"For that there bit o" string, sir?" said the man, drily. "What do you call that, then, and that?"
He pointed up to a bough about nine feet above him, where a cl.u.s.ter of orchids grew, for the most part of a sickly, pallid hue, save in one spot, where a shaft of sunlight came through the dense leafy canopy and dyed the strangely-formed petals of one bunch with orange, purple and gold, while the huge mossy tree trunk, half covered with parasitic creepers, whose stems knotted it with their huge cordage, showed traces of some one having climbed to reach the great horizontal bough.
"That looks like Mr Brazier, his mark, sir, eh?"
"Yes, yes," cried Rob eagerly.
"Come on then, sir: we"re right."
"But did he make those marks coming or returning?"
"Can"t say, sir," said Shaddy, gruffly; and then, to himself, "That ain"t true, for he made "em coming, or I"m a Dutchman."
He made another careful calculation of their position, and was about to start again, when he caught sight of something about Rob, or rather its absence, and exclaimed,--
"Why, where"s them mushrooms?"
"Mushrooms, Shaddy! I--I don"t know."
"But, Master Rob!"
"Oh, who"s to think about eating at a time like this? Go on, pray; I shall not feel happy till I see Mr Brazier again."
Shaddy uttered a low grunt, gazed up at the shaft of light which shone upon the cl.u.s.ter of flowers, and then shifted the iguana again, and tramped on st.u.r.dily for about an hour, till there was a broad glare of light before them, and he suddenly stepped out from the greenish twilight into sunshine and day.
"Not so bad, Mr Rob, sir, without a compa.s.s!" he said, with a smile of triumph.
But Rob, as he stepped out, was already looking round for their fellow-prisoner in the forest, but looking in vain. There was no sign of human being in the solitude; and a chilly feeling of despair ran through the lad as he forgot his weariness and made a move for the hut, about a hundred yards away.
It was hard work to get through the low tangled growth out there in the sunlight; and before he was half-way there he stumbled and nearly fell, but gathered himself up with a faint cry of fear, for there was a low growl and a rush, as something bounded out, and he just caught a glimpse of the long lithe tawny body of a puma as it sprang into a fresh tangle of bush and reed, while Rob stood fast, and then turned to look at Shaddy.
The man"s face was wrinkled up, and for the moment he evidently shared the boy"s thoughts. Stepping close to him, he began to peer about amongst the thick growth from which the animal had sprung, while Rob felt sick as his imagination figured in the puma"s lair the torn and bleeding body of his friend; and as Shaddy suddenly exclaimed, "Here"s the place, sir!" he dared not look, but stood with averted eyes, till the man exclaimed:
"Had his nest here, sir, and he was asleep. Bah! I ought to have known. I never heard of a puma meddling with a man."
"Then Mr Brazier is not there?" said Rob faintly.
"Why, of course he ain"t," replied the man sourly. "Come along, sir, and let"s see if he"s in the hut."
They rushed to their newly thatched-in shelter, and Rob seized the side and peered in, where all was black darkness to him, coming as he did from the brilliant sunshine.
"Mr Brazier," he cried huskily; but there was no reply. "Mr Brazier,"
he shouted, "why don"t you answer?"
""Cause he ain"t there, my lad," said Shaddy gruffly. "Here, wait till I"ve doctored this iguana thing and hung it up. No, I"ll cover it with gra.s.s here in the cool, and then we must make back tracks and find Mr Brazier before night."
"Oh, Shaddy!" cried Rob in an anguished tone, "then he has been horribly hurt--perhaps killed!"
The man made no reply, but hurriedly cut open and cleaned the lizard at some distance from the hut, then buried it beneath quite a pile of gra.s.s, dead leaves and twigs, before stepping back to his companion in misfortune.
"Oh, why did you stop to do that," cried Rob, "when Mr Brazier may be lying dying somewhere in the forest?"
"Because when we find him, we must have food to eat, lad, and something for him too. That thing may save all our lives. Don"t you think I don"t want to get to him, because I do. Now then, sir, we"ve got to go straight back the way we came, and find him."
"You"ll go right back to where the spots--I mean, where we found the piece of string?" whispered Rob, whose feeling of weariness seemed to disappear at once.
"Yes, sir, straight back as an arrow, and it"s of no use to hide facts; you must take your place as a man now, and act like one, having the hard with the soft, so I shall speak plainly."
"You need not, Shaddy," said Rob sadly. "You are afraid he has been badly hurt and carried off by Indians--perhaps killed."
"Nay, my lad; that"s making worse of it than I thought. My ideas was bad enough, but not so bad as yours, and I think mine"s right."
"Then what do you think?" said Rob, as after a sharp glance round they made for the spot where they had re-entered the clearing from the forest.
"Tell you what I _don"t_ think first, my lad," replied Shaddy: "I don"t think it"s Indians, because I haven"t seen a sign of "em, and if I had I fancy they"d be peaceable, stupid sort of folk. No: he"s got into trouble with some beast or another."
"Killed?"
"Nay, nay; that"s the very worst of all. There"s hundreds of ways in which he might be hurt; and what I think is, that he has started to come back, and turned faint and laid down, and perhaps gone to sleep, so that we pa.s.sed him; or perhaps he has lost his way."
"Lost his way?" cried Rob, with a shiver of dread.
"Yes, my lad. It"s of no use to hide facts now."
"Then we shall never find him again, and he will wander about till he lies down and dies."
"Ah! now you"re making the worst of it again, sir. He might find the way out again by himself, but we"ve got to help him. Maybe we shall be able to follow his tracks; you and me has got to try that: an Indian or a dog would do it easily. Well, you and me ought to have more stuff in us than Indians or dogs, and if we make up our minds to do it, why, we shall. So, come along, and let"s see if we can"t muster up plenty of British pluck, say a bit of a prayer like men, and with G.o.d"s help we"ll find him before we"ve done."