Into the Primitive Part 7

Blake waited only for her to draw out the kerchief, before he began to force a way through the jungle. Now and then he beat at the tangled vegetation with his club. Though he held to the line by which he had left the thicket, yet all his efforts failed to open an easy pa.s.sage for the others. Many of the th.o.r.n.y branches sprang back into place behind him, and as Miss Leslie, who was the first to follow, sought to thrust them aside, the thorns pierced her delicate skin, until her hands were covered with blood. Nor did Winthrope, stumbling and hobbling behind her, fare any better. Twice he tripped headlong into the brush, scratching his arms and face.

Blake took his own punishment as a matter of course, though his tougher and thicker skin made his injuries less painful. He advanced steadily along the line of bent and broken twigs that marked his outward pa.s.sage, until the thicket opened on a strip of gra.s.sy ground beneath a wild fig-tree.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Winthrope, "a banyan!"

"Banyan? Well, if that's British for a daisy, you've hit it,"

responded Blake. "Just take a squint up here. How's that for a roost?"

Winthrope and Miss Leslie stared up dubiously at the edge of a bed of reeds gathered in the hollow of one of the huge flattened branches at its junction with the main trunk of the banyan, twenty feet above them.

"Will not the mosquitoes pester us, here among the trees?" objected Winthrope.

"Storm must have blown 'em away. I haven't seen any yet."

"There will be millions after sunset."

"Maybe; but I bet they keep below our roost"

"But how are we to get up so high?" inquired Miss Leslie.

"I can swarm this drop root, and I've a creeper ready for you two,"

explained Blake.

Suiting action to words, he climbed up the small trunk of the air root, and swung over into the hollow where he had piled the reeds. Across the broad limb dangled a rope-like creeper, one end of which he had fastened to a branch higher up. He flung down the free end to Winthrope.

"Look lively, Pat," he called. "The sun's most gone, and the twilight don't last all night in these parts. Get the line around Miss Leslie, and do what you can on a boost."

"I see; but, you know, the vine is too stiff to tie."

Blake stifled an oath, and jerked the end of the creeper up into his hand. When he threw it down again, it was looped around and fastened in a bowline knot.

"Now, Miss Leslie, get aboard, and we'll have you up in a jiffy," he said.

"Are you sure you can lift me?" asked the girl, as Winthrope slipped the loop over her shoulders.

Blake laughed down at them. "Well, I guess yes! Once hoisted a fellow out of a fifty-foot prospect hole--big fat Dutchman at that. You don't weigh over a hundred and twenty."

He had stretched out across the broadest part of the branch. As Miss Leslie seated herself in the loop, he reached down and began to haul up on the creeper, hand over hand. Though frightened by the novel manner of ascent, the girl clung tightly to the line above her head, and Blake had no difficulty in raising her until she swung directly beneath him.

Here, however, he found himself in a quandary. The girl seemed as helpless as a child, and he was lying flat. How could he lift her above the level of the branch?

"Take hold the other line," he said. The girl hesitated. "Do you hear?

Grab it quick, and pull up hard, if you don't want a tumble!"

The girl seized the part of the creeper which was fastened above, and drew herself up with convulsive energy. Instantly Blake rose to his knees, and grasping the taut creeper with one hand, reached down with the other, to swing the girl up beside him on the branch.

"All right, Miss Jenny," he rea.s.sured her as he felt her tremble.

"Sorry to scare you, but I couldn't have made it without. Now, if you'll just hold down my legs, we'll soon hoist his luds.h.i.+p."

He had seated her in the broadest part of the shallow hollow, where the branch joined the main trunk of the fig. Heaped with the reeds which he had gathered during the afternoon, it made such a cozy shelter that she at once forgot her dizziness and fright. Nestling among the reeds, she leaned over and pressed down on his ankles with all her strength.

The loose end of the creeper had fallen to the ground when Blake lifted her upon the branch, and Winthrope was already slipping into the loop.

Blake ordered him to take it off, and send up the club. As the creeper was again flung down, a black shadow swept over the jungle.

"h.e.l.lo! Sunset!" called Blake. "Look sharp, there!"

"All ready," responded Winthrope.

Blake drew in a full breath, and began to hoist. The position was an awkward one, and Winthrope weighed thirty or forty pounds more than Miss Leslie. But as the Englishman came within reach of the descending loop, he grasped it and did what he could to ease Blake's efforts. A few moments found him as high above the ground as Blake could raise him.

Without waiting for orders, he swung himself upon the upper part of the creeper, and climbed the last few feet unaided. Blake grunted with satisfaction as he pulled him in upon the branch.

"You may do, after all," he said. "At any rate, we're all aboard for the night; and none too soon. Hear that!"

"What?"

"Lion, I guess--Not that yelping. Listen!"

The brief twilight was already fading into the darkness of a moonless night, and as the three crouched together in their shallow nest, they were soon made audibly aware of the savage nature of their surroundings.

With the gathering night the jungle wakened into full life. From all sides came the harsh squawking of birds, the weird cries of monkeys and other small creatures, the crash of heavy animals moving through the jungle, and above all the yelp and howl and roar of beasts of prey.

After some contention with Winthrope, Blake conceded that the roars of his lion might be nothing worse than the snorting of the hippopotami as they came out to browse for the night. In this, however, there was small comfort, since Winthrope presently rea.s.serted his belief in the climbing ability of leopards, and expressed his opinion that, whether or not there were lions in the neighborhood, certain of the barking roars they could hear came from the throats of the spotted climbers. Even Blake's hair bristled as his imagination pictured one of the great cats creeping upon them in the darkness from the far end of their nest limb, or leaping down out of the upper branches.

The nerves of all three were at their highest tension when a dark form swept past through the air within a yard of their faces. Miss Leslie uttered a stifled scream, and Blake brandished his club. But Winthrope, who had caught a glimpse of the creature's shape, broke into a nervous laugh.

"It's only a fruit bat," he explained. "They feed on the banyan figs, you know."

In the reaction from this false alarm, both men relaxed, and began to yield to the effects of the tramp across the mud-flats. Arranging the reeds as best they could, they stretched out on either side of Miss Leslie, and fell asleep in the middle of an argument on how the prospective leopard was most likely to attack.

Miss Leslie remained awake for two or three hours longer. Naturally she was more nervous than her companions, and she had been refreshed by her afternoon's nap. Her nervousness was not entirely due to the wild beasts. Though Blake had taken pains to secure himself and his companions in loops of the creeper, fastened to the branch above, Winthrope moved about so restlessly in his sleep that the girl feared he would roll from the hollow.

At last her limbs became so cramped that she was compelled to change her position. She leaned back upon her elbow, determined to rise again and maintain her watch the moment she was rested. But sleep was close upon her. There was a lull in the louder noises of the jungle. Her eyes closed, and her head sank lower. In a little time it was lying upon Winthrope's shoulder, and she was fast asleep.

As Blake had a.s.serted, the mosquitoes had either been blown away by the cyclone, or did not fly to such a height. None came to trouble the exhausted sleepers.

CHAPTER VI

MAN AND GENTLEMAN

Night had almost pa.s.sed, and all three, soothed by the refres.h.i.+ng coolness which preceded the dawn, were sleeping their soundest, when a sudden fierce roar followed instantly by a piercing squeal caused even Blake to start up in panic. Miss Leslie, too terrified to scream, clung to Winthrope, who crouched on his haunches, little less overcome.

Blake was the first to recover and puzzle out the meaning of the cras.h.i.+ng in the jungle and the ferocious growls directly beneath them.

"Lie still," he whispered. "We're all right. It's only a beast that's killed something down below us."

All sat listening, and as the noise of the animals in the thicket died away, they could hear the beast beneath them tear at the body of its victim.