I had the stone around my neck next morning when it came daylight. We were both pretty tired, with short sleep, short food and hard work, but neither of us was anything like done, and I for one felt almost brisk when the fresh wind of sunrise sprang up, blowing the ferns and orchids about on the edge of the precipice and sending the spray of the great waterfall flying out into the sun. The Marquis was sleeping just then. I did not wake him, but got up to reconnoitre; this sunrise hour is the clearest of all the day, and one can see the distant peaks and ranges that are invisible once the eight o’clock clouds begin.
I did not particularly like what I saw. In all the wide expanse of close-furred green before me there was not a break, not a suggestion of a clearing or a station; only the wave on wave of primeval sea of tree-tops that buries all New Guinea beneath its overwhelming flood. Far in front the green lapped into a fold that suggested a river; that was my only hope. As to these mountain torrents....
Was that a cough?
It sounded like one—the cough that a native gives when he wishes to attract attention. I turned around to face the wall of bush, but could see nothing, and I could not even be sure I had heard anything, for we were not far from the waterfall and its thundering noise.
Well, if there had not been anything to hear, there was certainly something to see—a green bough waving frantically, all by itself, as if shaken by an unseen hand. The hand itself appeared by and by, and now the bough was waved more violently than ever, while a voice cried out in the Mambare dialect, “Let us speak!”
“Speak!” I answered, waking the Marquis with a push and telling him to keep ready with his revolver.
“Is it peace?” continued the unseen native, whom I guessed to be the Koiroro who had interpreted before.
“What do you want?” I yelled.
“We want the sorcerer’s great charm,” came the reply.
“Come out,” I said. “I will do no harm to you.”