4
Hume glanced up alertly. There was a bare chance that "Brodie" might have witnessed their arrival and might be coming in now to save them all a great amount of time and trouble by acting the overjoyed, rescued castaway.
But he could sight nothing at all in that direction to excite any attention. The distant mountains provided a stark, dark blue background. Up their foothills and lower slopes was a thick furring of trees with foliage of so deep a green as to register black from this distance. And on the level country was the lighter blue-green of the other variety of wood edging the open country about the river. In there rested the L-B.
"I don't see anything!" he snapped, so sharply the little man stared at him in open surprise. Hume forced a quick smile.
"Just what did you sight, Gentlehomo Starns? There is no large game in the woodlands."
"This was not an animal, Hunter. Rather a flash of light, just about there." Again he pointed.
Sun, Hume thought, could have been reflected from some portion of the L-B. He had believed that small spacer so covered with vines and ringed in by trees that it could not have been so sighted. But a storm might have disposed of some of nature's cloaking. If so Starns' interest must be fed, he would make an ideal discoverer.
"Odd." Hume produced his distance glasses. "Just where, Gentlehomo?"
"There." Starns obligingly pointed a third time.