Part 7 (1/2)

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.”