Part 3 (1/2)
”Lean, hard as nails, no sign of fever--and after six weeks on this beastly coast! How'd you do it, old man? You're fit--deuced fit!”
”Fit to give pointers to the Wild Man from Borneo,” chuckled Blake. He drew out a silver cigarette case and snapped open the lid. ”See those little beauties?--No! hands off! Good Lord! those're my arrow tips, soaking in snake poison! A scratch would do for you as sure as a drink of cyanide. Brought down an eland with one of those little points--antelope big as a steer.”
”Poison! fancy now!” exclaimed Lord James.
”Yes; from a puff adder that almost got Miss Jenny--fellow big as my leg. Struck at her as she bent to pick an amaryllis. If it had so much as grazed her hand or arm--G.o.d!”
He looked away, his teeth clenched together and the sweat starting out on his broad forehead. What he thought of Genevieve Leslie was plainly evident in his convulsed face and dilated eyes. If he could be so overwrought by the mere remembrance of a danger that she had escaped, he must love her, not as most men love, but with all the depth and strength of his powerful nature. Lord James's lips pressed together and his gray eyes clouded with pain.
”Close shave, heh?” he muttered.
”Yes,” replied Blake. He drew in a deep breath, and added, ”Not the first, though, nor the last. But a miss is as good as a mile, hey, Jimmy boy?”
”Gad, old man, that sounds natural! Can't say you look it, though--not altogether. Must get you aboard and into another style of fine raiment.
Fur trousers not good form in this climate, y'know. You picked up that s.h.i.+rt at a remnant counter, I take it. Come aboard. Must mow that alfalfa patch before any one suspects you're trying to raise a beard.”
The friendly banter seemed to have the contrary effect from that intended. Blake's face darkened.
”Good Lord, no!” he rumbled. ”Go aboard with her? What d'you take me for?”
”Give you my word, I don't take you at all,” replied the puzzled Englishman.
”What! Hasn't she told you? But of course she wouldn't--unless she saw you alone,” muttered Blake. ”Come on up the canon. I've thought it all out--just what must be done. But it'll take some time to explain. Wait!
Did you come alone?--any one follow you?”
”No. Told 'em to stay near the boat.”
”Just the same, I'll make sure,” said Blake. He dived into the barricade pa.s.sage, and quickly reappeared, dragging at the b.u.t.t of the date palm. ”There, me lud; the door is shut. n.o.body is going to walk in on our private conference now. Come on.”
CHAPTER III
LORD AND MAN
Blake turned about and swung away up the ravine. Lord James followed in the half-obliterated path, which led along the edge of a tiny spring rill. The cleft was here closed in on each side with sheer walls of rock from twenty to thirty feet high. At the point where this small box canon intersected the middle of the cliff ridge, the gigantic baobab that Lord James had seen from the steamer, towered skyward, its huge trunk filling a good third of the width of the gorge. Across from it and nearer at hand was a thicket of bamboos, around which the spring rill trickled from a natural basin in the rock.
But the visitor gave scant heed to the natural features of the place.
His glance pa.s.sed from a great antelope hide, drying on a frame, to the bamboo racks on which sun-seared strips of flesh were curing over a smudge fire. Looking to his left, he saw a hut hardly larger than a dog kennel but ingeniously thatched with bamboo leaves. Then his glance was caught and held by a curious contrivance of interwoven thorn branches and creepers, fitted into a high narrow opening in the trunk of the baobab.
”What's that?--hollow tree?” he asked.
”Yes,” answered Blake, without turning. ”Sixteen-foot room inside.
That's where the she-leopard and the cubs were smothered. Fired the gully to drive out the family. All stayed at home and got smothered 'cept old Mr. Leopard. He ran the gantlet. Lord, how he squalled, poor brute! But they'd have eaten us if we hadn't eaten them. He landed in the pool, too scorched to see. Settled him with my club.”
”Clubbed him?--a leopard! I say now! A bit different, that, to snipe shooting.”
”Well, yes, a trifle different, Jeems--a trifle,” conceded Blake.
”My word! What haven't you been through!” burst out the Englishman.