The flimsy flooring shook as he bounded back toward the door. I jumped back with him—and then looked.
The bamboo was rolling about on the floor, and trying to stand on its end!
We stood with our backs against the thatch by the door, breathing very hard, and staring still harder. The thing kept on jumping and rolling. It was rolling toward us.
I have never been called a nervous man; but I was down the ladder and out in the street almost before the Marquis. It has always seemed to me a special Providence that we did not meet, and stick, in the door.
We were scarcely out, and beginning to feel a little foolish—I, for one, had made up my mind already to go back and investigate the thing, sorcery, trick, or whatever it was—when we saw the tall, wet figure of Mo coming up through the trees from the river. It did not seem a happy time to continue our investigations, so we made for the tent, trying to look as if we had only been out for a stroll, and (I dare say) succeeding just about as well as a couple of small boys caught coming away from the fruit garden.
“No go,” I said, flinging myself down on the pile of sacks inside our tent. “Mark, we’ll have a smoke and a game of cards, and then we’ll go to sleep.”
“What for, to sleep?” asked the Marquis.
“Because I don’t propose to sleep much tonight—nor will you. It seems to me that things are given to happening here at night, and I intend to keep a look-out instead.”
“We will sleep, then,” agreed my companion. And we did, after our smoke and our game—all through the burning afternoon, until the sun began to drop behind the cocoanuts, and the leather-necks commenced their evening squawking and squabbling, and the smoke of supper fires stole out, smelling pleasant and peaceful and homey and everything that it particularly was not—here in the heart of cannibal Papua, in the sorcerer’s town.
When we woke up we were thoroughly rested, for we had slept long and deep, after our broken rest the night before. I called up Koppi Koko, and bade him get the supper ready. The Marquis yawned, stretched, and sat up on his mat.