Not a sound came from the toadstool clump of houses above as we crept down the precipice. We were out of earshot before long, and able to speak as we mounted the next great wall of rock, keeping always in the direction of the far-off Government station, which I now began to hope we should reach. By the lay of the land, I guessed we had forty miles or more to go, and that might mean a week in this country of precipices. Still, if we could find anything to eat on the way, and if the Koiroros did not recapture us, it was—just—possible to get through.
Dawn, rising red through the tableland of white cloud, like spilled blood spreading on snow, came up and caught us sooner than I liked. We were out of sight of the village, having crossed two ridges, but our position, climbing up the bare rock at the side of a waterfall, was dangerously exposed should any of the Koiroros be within sight. I stopped where I was, on a ledge of stone overgrown with white butterfly orchids, and looked over the tossing billows of tree-tops that lay behind. There was small satisfaction in that. An army might have been hidden in the bush, following us up. Still—considering the speed the Koiroros could keep up in this mountain country when they chose—it certainly did look as if they were not pursuing us. The Marquis was jubilant.
“They are not spiritual, these people,” he declared, scrambling like a cockroach in my rear. “By gum! I think their mentality is far back in the scale of evolution; they are blessed idiots. They lock the stable door when the milk is spilt. I can figure how they are saying injuries to one another about our invasion, now we are safe away.”
I did not say anything, for the reason that I was not very sure we were safe away—yet. There was something I did not understand about this easy letting go. All the same, there was only one thing to do—go on as fast as possible, and we did.
Towards midday, as we were crawling painfully up a perpendicular forest hung out like a hearth-rug left to dry, over the side of a three-thousand-foot cliff, I fancied the light ahead was growing very clear. All morning we had been working along as one generally does in the interior, right at the bottom of the forests, judging our direction by compass and by the rise of the land, and seeing no more of the country in general than if we had been crawling along in the depths of the sea. But the light ahead and above looked as if there were a big break-off somewhere. I pointed it out to the Marquis, to encourage him.
“I believe that’s the southwestern face of the Kiloki Range we’re coming to,” I said. “If there’s a big drop there, and if we can get down, it will give us a long lift on our way to the Government station.”
The Marquis paused to wipe his dripping face; it was atrociously hot in there, sheltered from all cooling breezes. He cast a glance at his khaki shirt and trousers, crumpled and stained and torn in many places.
“Has he a wife or a daughter, and is she beautiful?” he asked.
“Who? The R. M.? Don’t know who he is; but I should think it most unlikely he has any womenkind up there.”
The Marquis sighed and was silent.