Bunyip Land Part 51

"You have seen him--the prisoner?" said the doctor.

"Yes; iss Jimmy see um. Shut up all along. Sittum down, um look at ground all sleep, sleep like wallaby, wallaby."

"He means the poor fellow who helped us to escape," I said sadly.

"Jimmy see Ma.s.s Joe fader," cried the black indignantly. "Jimmy take um right long show um."

"The man who brought us here?"

"No, no, no, no!" cried Jimmy, dancing with vexation. "Not, not. Jimmy see um Ma.s.s Joe fader sit all along. See froo hole. Big long beard down um tummuck--long hair down um back. Um shake um head so, so. Say 'hi--hi--ho--hum. Nev see home again. Ah, my wife! Ah, my boy!'"

"You heard him say that, Jimmy?" I cried, catching him by the arm.

"Jimmy sure, sure. Jimmy look froo hole. Den fro little tone an hit um, and den black fellow come along, and Jimmy lay fas' sleep, eye shut, no move bit."

"He has seen him, Joe," cried the doctor. "He could not have invented that."

There was a low whining growl here again from Gyp, and Jack Penny drawled:

"I say, sha'n't we all be made prisoners if we stop here?"

"Quick!" said the doctor; "follow me."

"And our guide?" I cried.

"We must come in search of him another time. If he has been with the blacks for long he will know how to protect himself."

I was unwilling to leave one who had helped us in such a time of need; but to stay meant putting ourselves beyond being able to rescue my father, if it were really he who was our guide's fellow-prisoner. The result, of course, was that I followed the doctor, while a snuffling whine now and then told us that Gyp was on in front, and, in spite of the darkness, leading the way so well that there seemed to be no difficulty.

"Where are we going?" I said, after a pause, during which we had been listening to the cries of the savages, which appeared to come from several directions.

"To our hiding-place," said the doctor. "Jimmy found it before we lost him, and we have kept to it since, so as to be near you."

"But how did you know you were near me?" I said.

"Through Gyp first. He went away time after time, and I suspected that he had found you, so one day we followed him and he led us to the village."

"Yes?" I said.

"Then we had to wait. I sent messages to you by him; and at last I got your answer. To-night we were coming again to try and reach you, perhaps get you away. We meant to try. I should not have gone back without you, my lad," he said quietly.

The cries now seemed distant, and we went slowly on through the darkness--slowly, for the trees were very close and it required great care to avoid rushing against them; but the doctor seemed to have made himself acquainted with the forest, and he did not hesitate till all at once the shouts of the blacks seemed to come from close by upon our right, and were answered directly from behind us.

"A party of them have worked round," whispered the doctor. "Keep cool.

They cannot know we are so near. Hist! crouch down."

We were only just in time, for hardly had we crouched down close to the ground than the sound of the savages pushing forward from tree to tree was heard.

I could not understand it at first, that curious tapping noise; but as they came nearer I found that each man lightly tapped every tree he reached, partly to avoid it, by the swinging of his waddy, partly as a guide to companions of his position.

They came closer and closer, till it seemed that they must either see or touch us, and I felt my heart beat in heavy dull throbs as I longed for the rifle that these people had taken from me when they made me prisoner.

I heard a faint rustle to my right, and I knew it was Jimmy preparing for a spring. I heard a slight sound on my left just as the nearest savage uttered a wild cry, and I knew that this was the lock of a gun being c.o.c.ked. Then all was silent once more.

Perhaps the savages heard the faint click, and uttered a warning, for the tapping of the trees suddenly ceased, and not the faintest sound could be heard.

This terrible silence lasted quite five minutes. It seemed to me like an hour, and all the while we knew that at least a dozen armed savage warriors were within charging distance, and that discovery meant certain captivity, if not death.

I held my breath till I felt that when I breathed again I should utter a loud gasp and be discovered. I dared not move to bury my face in my hands or in the soft earth, and my sensations were becoming agonising, when there was a sharp tap on a tree, so near that I felt the ground quiver. The tap was repeated to right and left, accompanied by a curious cry that sounded like "Whai--why!" and the party swept on.

"A narrow escape!" said the doctor, as we breathed freely once more.

"Go on, Gyp. Let's get to earth; we shall be safer there."

I did not understand the doctor's words then, but followed in silence, with Jack Penny coming close up to me whenever he found the way open, to tell me of his own affairs.

"My back's a deal better," he whispered. "I've been able to rest it lately--waiting for you, and it makes it stronger, you know, and--"

"Silence, Penny!" said the doctor reprovingly, and Jack fell back a few feet; and we travelled on, till suddenly, instead of treading upon the soft decayed-leaf soil of the forest, I found that we were rustling among bushes down a steep slope. Then we were amongst loose stones, and as the darkness was not quite so dense I made out by sight as well as by the soft trickling sound, that a little rivulet was close to our feet.

This we soon afterwards crossed, and bidding me stoop the doctor led the way beneath the dense bushes for some little distance before we seemed to climb a stony bank, and then in the intense darkness he took me by the shoulders and backed me a few steps.

"There's quite a bed of branches there," he said aloud. "You can speak out, we are safe here;" and pressing me down I sat upon the soft twigs that had been gathered together, and Jack Penny came and lay down beside me, to talk for a time and then drop off to sleep, an example I must have followed. For all at once I started and found that it was broad daylight, with the loud twittering song of birds coming from the bushes at the entrance of what seemed to be a low-roofed extensive cave, whose mouth was in the shelving bank of a great bluff which overhung a silvery-sounding musical stream.

Some light came in from the opening; but the place was made bright by the warm glow that came from a kind of rift right at the far end of the cave, and through this was also wafted down the sweet forest scents.

"Jimmy's was a lucky find for us," said the doctor, when I had partaken of the food I found they had stored there, and we had talked over our position and the probability of my belief being correct. "It is shelter as well as a stronghold;" and he pointed to the means he had taken to strengthen the entrance, by making our black followers bind together the branches of the tangled shrubs that grew about the mouth.

In the talk that ensued it was decided that we would wait a couple of days, and then go by night and thoroughly examine the village. Jimmy would be able to point out the hut where my father was confined, and then if opportunity served we would bring him away, lie hidden here for a few days till the heat of the pursuit was over, and then escape back to the coast.

I would not own to the doctor that I had my doubts, and he owned afterwards to me that his feeling was the same. So we both acted as if we had for certain discovered him of whom we came in search, and waited our time for the first venture.

It was dangerous work hunting for food at so short a distance from the village, but our black followers, aided by Jimmy, were very successful, their black skins protecting them from exciting surprise if they were seen from a distance, and they brought in a good supply of fish every day simply by damming up some suitable pool in the little stream in whose bank our refuge was situated. This stream swarmed with fish, and it was deep down in a gully between and arched over by trees. The bows and arrows and Jimmy's spear obtained for us a few birds, and in addition they could always get for us a fair supply of fruit, though not quite such as we should have chosen had it been left to us. Roots, too, they brought, so that with the stores we had there was not much prospect of our starving.

In fact so satisfactory was our position in the pleasant temperate cave that Jack Penny was in no hurry to move.

"We're just as well here as anywhere else," he said; "that is, if we had found your father."

"And got him safe here," he added after a pause.

"And the black chaps didn't come after us," he said after a little more thought.

"And your mother wasn't anxious about you," he said, after a little more consideration.

"You'll find such a lot more reasons for not stopping, Jack Penny," I said, after hearing him out, "that you'll finish by saying we had better get our work done and return to a civilised country as soon as we can."

"Oh, I don't know!" said Jack slowly. "I don't care about civilised countries: they don't suit me. Everybody laughs at me because I'm a bit different, and father gives it to me precious hard sometimes. Give me Gyp and my gun, and I should be happy enough here."

"Don't talk like that, Jack," I said in agony, as I thought of him who had helped me to escape, and of the prisoner he had mentioned, and whom the black professed to have seen. "Let's get our task done and escape as soon as we can. A savage life is not for such as we."