The two quickly slid down the embankment and entered the wood.
"I had given you up," said Will breathlessly. "What have you done?"
The Indian"s story was a very simple and natural one, and Will saw that his anxiety had been quite baseless. Azito had approached to within a quarter-mile of the hacienda, and then found himself checked. The camp was astir; sentries were placed at several points of its circuit; it was impossible to get in undetected. There was no alternative but to wait.
Will could imagine Azito sitting with the stolid patience of the Indian, clasping his knees, indifferent to the pa.s.sage of time. His opportunity came at noon, when, after the midday meal, everybody but the sentries retired for a siesta, and even they were drowsy. Slipping round the camp, he wormed his way through the undergrowth to the back of the stables. The hole in the wall had not been filled up. There was no sound from within. Wriggling through the hole, he found that the stables were deserted. The door was open. All was quiet before the hacienda. He peeped round to the right. No sentry was posted at the new stables. Evidently the prisoners had not been transferred to them.
It was impossible to search for them through the camp. Stealthily he made his way back as he had come, and going a long way round, crossed the embankment and drew near to the camp again, to view it from the other side. There was nothing to indicate the whereabouts of the prisoners.
"Did you see any one you knew?" asked Will.
"Senor Machado, senor. I saw him go in and out of the house. Once he came out with General Carabano."
"Are there any special guards set in the camp itself?"
"None, senor, except the sentry at the door. He was asleep against the wall when I looked out from the stables."
The absence of special guards in the camp or at the house seemed to indicate that the prisoners had been removed elsewhere. A horrible fear that they had already been shot seized upon Will. For a moment he shuddered in a cold sweat of doubt and dread. But then he remembered that the period of grace had not yet expired. Furthermore, the prisoners would be more valuable alive than dead. While they still lived there was a chance of their being ransomed. General Carabano would surely, as the Jefe had suggested, hesitate to involve himself in serious complications with the British Government. A revolutionary leader can hardly play the remorseless tyrant until success has placed him beyond criticism.
But if the prisoners, then, were still alive, as seemed probable, where were they? So far as Will knew, there was no place in the immediate neighbourhood to which they could have been taken. He was at a loss how to make any discovery on this matter without revealing his presence to the enemy. The camp was astir. To enter it now was impossible. It seemed that the only thing to do was to return to the recess, and remain there until night, trying meanwhile to think out some course of action.
Before he left, however, he determined to climb the embankment once more for a final look round. Choosing for his ascent a spot a little nearer to the camp, on gaining the top he caught sight of the small wooden cabin which had been erected for the telegraphic apparatus. Before, it was concealed from him by a row of bushes. For a moment he wondered whether the prisoners had been locked up there, but the notion was negatived immediately by the absence of a sentry. And then he laughed inwardly at the idea of the prisoners being within reach of Machado.
The telegraphist would hardly feel safe to perform his duties, if they were still required of him, with O"Connor near at hand, even though he was bound.
There was nothing to be gained by remaining longer, so Will, very despondent, made his way back with Azito through the wood to the recess in the bank. Jose reported that nothing had happened during their absence. They all had a meal; then Will went up the bank and strolled along where the vegetation did not impede walking, gloomily pondering his apparent helplessness.
Suddenly he heard a slight warning sound from Azito. He stepped hastily back among the trees, and looked up-stream, the direction in which the Indian was pointing. Coming round a bend some distance away was an object that looked like a cage or a basket. There was a man in it, standing in the middle, steering the strange vessel with a short pole as it drifted down the stream. Azito declared that he was a white man.
Will gazed at him searchingly; then almost shouted for joy. The newcomer was Joe Ruggles.
CHAPTER XI--A LEAP IN THE DARK
When Ruggles came within a few yards of the spot where the two watchers stood, Will softly hailed him. He looked round in alarm, and made as though to beat a summary retreat. Then, lifting his eyes and seeing Will among the trees, he steered towards the bank, saying--
"It"s you, is it? I say, do you happen to have a gla.s.s of beer?"
"No, I haven"t."
"Perhaps it"s as well, but I am powerful dry."
"I say, I am awfully glad to see you. Hold on! I"ll come down and show you the entrance to my garage. Are the others safe too?"
"Not that I know of. I wish they were. Where have you been skylarking?"
"Skylarking! Good heavens! I"ve been worried out of my life. I"ll tell you all about it, but first tell me where the others are, and how you came here."
The raft was drawn into the recess, and Ruggles was soon seated beside Will in the hydroplane, eating bread and cheese, and sighing for his one gla.s.s of beer and a pipe to follow.
"Not but what it"s as well to do without "em," he said. "If I began life over again I"d avoid beer and tobacco; at least, I would if I could. Well, the morning after you went there was a rare shindy, as you may imagine, when they found your manger empty. They hauled us out and questioned us, and General Carabano looked as if he could have made a meal of us. O"Connor and I were as much surprised as he was, and wild with the Chief for not telling us. However, the General got nothing out of us, and within an hour we were put on horses and marched up-country with a strong escort of those ruffians. Our hands were tied behind us, and our horses were led, the escort being mounted too.
"I made out from what some of "em said that their General was going to make a dash on Bolivar, and didn"t think we"d be safe at the hacienda.
He wanted all his men for the raid, you see, and intended to leave only a few peons to look after the camp and the horses. He couldn"t trust them, of course, and I reckon we"d have got away pretty soon if he had left us there. I didn"t hear where they were taking us, and when I asked the fellow who led my horse, he only grinned at me like an ape."
"O"Connor was mad, no doubt," said Will.
"You"d have thought so, wouldn"t you? But he wasn"t, a bit; or didn"t show it. He tried to crack jokes with his man, and it was amusing, though not as he intended, for, as you know, his Spanish wouldn"t cover a half-sheet of note-paper. But all the time I could see he was looking round for a chance of escape. However, I managed it, and so far as I know, he didn"t. In my case it was sheer luck. Most of the escort were llaneros, fine fellows, too, as near gentlemen as any Venezuelan can be.
But the fellow who tied me up was a b.u.mpkin, who made a bungle of the job. I held my wrists so that by giving them a twist afterwards I could loosen the knots: you know the trick."
"Rather! I should have thought O"Connor would have known it too."
"He may or may not. Anyway, we came to a part where the path had a sheer cliff on the one side and a precipice on the other; a sort of steep dell, you know, overgrown with trees and shrubs. The path was so narrow that we had to go in single file, and, as luck would have it, I came last, except one man riding free behind me. Just as we came to the precipice I kind of saw there might be half a chance, so as my b.u.mpkin drew ahead of me--he"d lengthened the leading-rein--I managed to give his horse accidentally a kick in the flank that rather upset his temper.
The fellow was in a fright; it looked a nasty drop to the left. Being busy with his horse he dropped the leading-rein. I wrenched my hands free, brought my horse round on his hind legs--for an instant his forelegs were fairly dangling over the precipice--and then drove him straight for the man behind, wedging in between him and the cliff.
"The path was narrow, as I said. There wasn"t room for two, and as I"d got the inside, the other fellow simply had to go over the precipice. He went. There was plenty of green stuff to break his fall, and I don"t wish him any particular harm. You may guess I didn"t wait to give him my kind regards, but made off like the wind. The Chief gave me a cheer.
Before I turned the corner that would hide me from the rest, half-a-dozen shots were flying after me, and one of them struck my horse. But he kept on. I got safe to the end of the ledge, and then dived into the forest, where they might have hunted for a month of Sundays without finding me.
"I dismounted as soon as I was pretty safe, and led the horse, but the poor beast was done, and dropped after a few miles. I didn"t feel very happy. You know what these forests are. Let alone the chance of losing yourself, there are too many jaguars and pumas and snakes to make travelling on foot very pleasant. All I"d got to defend myself with was--what do you think?"
"What was it?"
"A two-bladed pen-knife, one blade broken, that had slipped into the lining of my pocket and wasn"t discovered when they searched us before tying us up. It wouldn"t have scared a toad. However, I"ve roughed it all over the world too long to grizzle over what can"t be helped. My game clearly was to make for the Orinoco. All roads lead to Rome, they say: it"s certain that all streams in these parts lead to the Orinoco.
It struck me I"d be safest on water, so I made up my mind to stop at the first stream I came to and build myself a raft. Floating down with the current I couldn"t fail to strike the Orinoco sooner or later."
"A queer thing, this raft of yours."
"It served my turn. You see, I was in a quandary. When I came to a stream it was swarming with caymans, and, what"s worse, watersnakes. I dursn"t make a raft in their company, and yet I must make it on the brink of the stream, for I couldn"t have carried down one big enough to float me. There was plenty of material, of course--dead branches, and bejuco for fastening them together. After a power of thought I hit on the notion of rigging up a sort of cage in which I could make the raft without the risk of having reptiles closer than I liked. I did that on the bank out of range of the caymans--they"re not partial to journeys on land. I pushed the cage--it was light enough--down to the edge of the stream, and brought down my materials, and put the raft together inside the cage, where I was safe. It was a longish job. I had to push it out into the stream bit by bit as I finished it, and was always in a stew when I left it in case the current carried it away before I was ready.
However, the current was sluggish at the bank, so I was spared that calamity."
"But how have you lived? It"s four days since you went away."
"I"ve lived in this country long enough to know what forest plants are good for food. Not that they"re very staying, nor to be compared with bread and cheese. I slept in trees, and here I am, thank G.o.d! though I hadn"t a notion I had got into this particular stream."
"How far away were you when you escaped?" asked Will.
"Thirty or forty miles at a guess. We marched all the first day and bivouacked for the night at a deserted estancia. I made a bolt for it about ten next morning, struck the stream in the afternoon, and got together the material for the raft before nightfall. I finished it next day, but had to spend another night in a tree, and the stream winds about so much that it has taken me all day to get here."
"I"m glad you"ve come, but it"s a bad look-out for the others. General Carabano has threatened to shoot you all to-morrow if he doesn"t receive 7,000."
"The villain! He won"t get it. I don"t know what you think, but we"re not worth all that. How do you know?"
Will then related all that had happened to him since he left the stables. When Ruggles heard of General Carabano"s defeat he looked very grave.
"He"ll be in a beastly temper," he said. "You and the Chief have dished him between you. He"s not the man to have any mercy on folks who have stood in his way, and if he hears that I"ve escaped he"ll be madder than ever. I don"t fancy they"ll let him know, though."
"But he"ll find out when he sends the order to shoot you, if he doesn"t go himself. Time"s up to-night. If he means what he says it"ll be all up to-morrow, unless we can do something. Do you think we could go up in the hydroplane to the place where you struck the stream and then track them across country?"
"I doubt whether we could do it. You see, I wandered about in the forest, and it might take us a week to find the precipice, even with your Indian."