We tramped and climbed and looked for half the afternoon. The sun got down in the west; we ate a little of our food as we clambered about, seeking endlessly, and drank from the pools made by the spray of the waterfall. That waterfall! It blocked us like a wall of iron; we could not cross it, or swim it, or get down alongside it. It was, in truth, an efficient gatekeeper to the country of the Stone Ovens.
“Marky, I’m of opinion that they knew this all along,” I said. “They played with us like cats with a mouse. They let us go just this far, knowing we could get no farther. As to what I think of the beasts——”
I said what I thought, without laying any restraint on myself. The Marquis listened for a moment, and then jumped up—he had been sitting on a stone—and gave a kind of howl.
“Look down!” he cried. I looked. Far, very far below I saw the figure of one of the Koiroros, carrying a dead body on his shoulders, like an ant going home with a grain of corn.
We were a good way from the waterfall at that moment, but the wall was still unbroken, and I could not see any place where the man could have got down. Still down he had evidently got, and the sight encouraged us more than I could say.
“The sun’s failing us now, Marky,” I said, “but tomorrow we’ll find that track or die.”
“I think you have reason; if we do not find it, we shall undoubtedly kick the bucket in this out-of-the-road wilderness,” replied the Marquis. “And if we were to finish like that, how many women of a great beauty and a great kindness would pour tears for we two over all the world!”
The sun was going down.
“Your watch first tonight, Marky,” I said. “And my turn for the diamond.”