Into the Primitive Part 12

"Odd place, is it not?" observed Winthrope. "Looks like a fox run, only larger, you know."

"Too low for deer, though--and their hoofs would have cut up the moss and ferns more. Let's get a close look."

As he spoke, Blake stooped and climbed a few yards up the trail to an overhanging ledge, four or five feet high. Where the trail ran up over this break in the slope the stone was bare of all vegetation. Blake laid his club on the top of the ledge, and was about to vault after it, when, directly beneath his nose, he saw the print of a great catlike paw, outlined in dried mud. At the same instant a deep growl came rumbling down the "fox run." Without waiting for a second warning, Blake drew his club to him, and crept back down the trail. His stealthy movements and furtive backward glances filled his companions with vague terror.

He himself was hardly less alarmed.

"Get out of the trees--into the open!" he exclaimed in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, and as they crept away, white with dread of the unknown danger, he followed at their heels, looking backward, his club raised in readiness to strike.

Once clear of the trees, Winthrope caught Miss Leslie by the hand, and broke into a run. In their terror, they paid no heed to Blake's command to stop. They had darted off so unexpectedly that he did not overtake them short of a hundred yards.

"Hold on!" he said, gripping Winthrope roughly by the shoulder. "It's safe enough here, and you'll knock out that blamed ankle."

"What is it? What did you see?" gasped Miss Leslie.

"Footprint," mumbled Blake, ashamed of his fright.

"A lion's?" cried Winthrope.

"Not so large--'bout the size of a puma's. Must be a leopard's den up there. I heard a growl, and thought it about time to clear out."

"By Jove, we'd better withdraw around the point!"

"Withdraw your aunty! There's no leopard going to tackle us out here in open ground this time of day. The sneaking tomcat! If only I had a match, I'd show him how we smoke rat holes."

"Mr. Winthrope spoke of rubbing sticks to make fire," suggested Miss Leslie.

"Make sweat, you mean. But we may as well try it now, if we're going to at all. The sun's hot enough to fry eggs. We'll go back to a shady place, and pick up sticks on the way."

Though there was shade under the cliff within some six hundred feet, they had to go some distance to the nearest dry wood--a dead thorp-bush.

Here they gathered a quant.i.ty of branches, even Miss Leslie volunteering to carry a load.

All was thrown down in a heap near the cliff, and Blake squatted beside it, penknife in hand. Having selected the dryest of the larger sticks, he bored a hole in one side and dropped in a pinch of powdered bark.

Laying the stick in the full glare of the sun, he thrust a twig into the hole, and began to twirl it between his palms. This movement he kept up for several minutes; but whether he was unable to twirl the twig fast enough, or whether the right kind of wood or tinder was lacking, all his efforts failed to produce a spark.

Unwilling to accept the failure, Winthrope insisted upon trying in turn, and pride held him to the task until he was drenched with sweat. The result was the same.

"Told you so," jeered Blake from where he. lay in the shade. "We'd stand more chance cracking stones together."

"But what shall we do now?" asked Miss Leslie. "I am becoming very tired of cocoanuts, and there seems to be nothing else around here.

Indeed, I think this is all such a waste of time. If we had walked straight along the sh.o.r.e this morning we might have reached a town."

"We might, Miss Jenny, and then, again, we mightn't. I happened to overhaul the captain's chart--Quilimane, Mozambique--that's all for hundreds of miles. Towns on this coast are about as thick as hens'-teeth."

"How about native villages?" demanded Winthrope.

"Oh, yes; maybe I'm fool enough to go into a wild n.i.g.g.e.r town without a gun. Maybe I didn't talk with fellows down on the Rand."

"But what shall we do?" repeated Miss Leslie, with a little frightened catch in her voice. She was at last beginning to realize what this rude break in her sheltered, pampered life might mean. "What shall we do?

It's--it's absurd to think of having to stay in this horrid country for weeks or perhaps months--unless some s.h.i.+p comes for us!"

"Look here, Miss Leslie," answered Blake, sharply yet not unkindly; "suppose you just sit back and use your thinker a bit. If you're your daddy's daughter, you've got brains somewhere down under the boarding-school stuff."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Now, don't get huffy, please! It's a question of think, not of putting on airs. Here we are, worse off than the people of the Stone Age. They had fire and flint axes; we've got nothing but our think tanks, and as to lions and leopards and that sort of thing, it strikes me we've got about as many on hand as they had."

"Then you and Mr. Winthrope should immediately arm yourselves."

"How?--But we'll leave that till later. What else?"

The girl gazed at the surrounding objects, her forehead wrinkled in the effort at concentration. "We must have water. Think how we suffered yesterday! Then there is shelter from wild beasts, and food, and--"

"All right here under our hands, if we had fire. Understand?"

"I understand about the water. You would frighten the leopard away with the fire; and if it would do that, it would also keep away the other animals at night. But as for food, unless we return for cocoanuts--"

"Don't give it up! Keep your thinker going on the side, while Pat tells us our next move. Now that he's got the fire sticks out of his head--"

"I say, Blake, I wish you would drop that name. It is no harder to say Winthrope."

"You're off, there," rejoined Blake. "But look here, I'll make it Win, if you figure out what we ought to do next."

"Really, Blake, that would not be half bad. They--er--they called me Win at Harrow."

"That so? My English chum went to Harrow--Jimmy Scarbridge."

"Lord James!--your chum?"

"He started in like you, sort of top-lofty. But he chummed all right--after I took out a lot of his British starch with a good walloping."

"Oh, really now, Blake, you can't expect any one with brains to believe that, you know!"

"No; I don't know, you know,--and I don't know if you've got any brains, you know. Here's your chance to show us. What's our next move?"

"Really, now, I have had no experience in this sort of thing--don't interrupt, please! It seems to me that our first concern is shelter for the night. If we should return to your tree nest, we should also be near the cocoa palms."

"That's one side. Here's the other. Bar to wade across--sharks and alligators; then swampy ground--malaria, mosquitoes, thorn jungle. Guess the hands of both of you are still sore enough, by their look."

"If only I had a pot of cold cream!" sighed Miss Leslie.

"If only I had a hunk of jerked beef!" echoed Blake.

"I say, why couldn't we chance it for the night around on the seaward face of the cliff?" asked Winthrope. "I noticed a place where the ledges overhang--almost a cave. Do you think it probable that any wild beast would venture so close to the sea?"

"Can't say. Didn't see any tracks; so we'll chance it for to-night.

Next!"

"By morning I believe my ankle will be in such shape that I could go back for the string of cocoanuts which we dropped on the beach."