"Get ahead with the guide," Rolfe ordered him, and the march was conducted with stealth and painful slowness. A broken cane here and patch of dead leaves crushed into the black mold there gave slender hints that a party might have passed that way; and every ear was attuned to preternatural keenness for human sounds, for the eye could not pierce the thicket a yard before.
Out upon this tense atmosphere burst a ghostly brown native, own brother to their guide in appearance, appearing so suddenly that Natalie uttered a little shriek of alarm. Bill Blunt, cool as a cucumber, charged his rifle chamber and clapped the muzzle against the brown man's breast without a word. The man stopped, amazingly unafraid, ignored Bill, and handed a piece of cane to Rolfe, picking him out as the leader unerringly.
Jerry stared at the small stick, turning it over and over in his hand like some backwoods denizen receiving a letter for the first time in forty years and scared to open it. Then Natalie detected a loose end to the stick and suggested that it might contain something of value. Rolfe stripped a rice leaf from the cane, opened it, and found a message written on it in a fair hand.
"On no account attack naval party. Barry and party are safe. Vandersee."
Rolfe glowered at the brief missive and looked up to find the messenger gone and Bill Blunt staring at the muzzle of his rifle which had a moment before been jammed against the man's brown skin. The mate read the words aloud and sought for an answer in Miss Sheldon's eyes. She brightened swiftly and cried out with relief:
"Oh, I said so, didn't I? Your captain and his party are safe in Mr. Vandersee's hands if they have done no wrong."
"Safe in Vandersee's hands," repeated Jerry slowly, as if groping for inspiration. "In—Vandersee's—hands! Pi'zen my soul, but that's what I've believed all along! Come on—March!" he gritted, and plunged ahead.