Passing over some high hills, we came, sweaty and breathless, down into a rocky gorge, along which we hurried, now skirting patches of cotton and corn and yams, now making a long détour around a sleeping village, until we arrived at a wood in a valley where a deep stream rumbled. And all this time we had seen no sign whatever of any living creature other than ourselves.
It was already full daylight, and throwing off our burdens, we flung ourselves down and slept. Had our danger been even more urgent, I believe that we could not have kept awake, so exhausted were we; and indeed, we were in greater peril than we had supposed, for all that day, whenever we woke, we heard at no great distance from our place of concealment the thump of a pestle pounding rice.
Twelve hours of daylight would easily have brought us to our destination. But it was slow work traveling in the darkness, and we still had far to go. Pushing on again that night, we pressed through a country thickly wooded with tall trees, many of which elephants had broken down in order to feed on the tender upper branches.
As we passed them, I was thrilled to see with my own eyes the work of wild elephants in their native country, and should have liked to stop for a time; but there was no opportunity to loiter, and leaving the woods behind us, we came at daylight to a brook, which had cut a deep channel into dark slate rock and blue clay.
Here I conjectured that we should camp for another day, but not so: our three leaders were strangely excited.
"Sure," O'Hara cried, pointing at a low hill at a distance in the plain, "sure, gentlemen, and there's our port. Where's the man would cast anchor this side of it?"
O'Hara, Gleazen, and Matterson stood at one side, and Arnold, Abe, and I at the other, with my poor uncle in the middle. We had not concerted to divide thus. Instinctively and unconsciously we separated into hostile factions, with poor Seth Upham—neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, as they say—standing weakly between us. But even so, the enthusiasm of the three was contagious. Weary though we were, we strongly felt it. We had come so far, all of us, and had wondered so much and so often about our mysterious errand, that now, with the end in sight, not one of us, I believe, would have stopped.
Casting caution to the winds, we swung down into a wild country and across the broad plain, where, after some three hours of rough hard travel, we came to the foot of the hill. And in all this time, except the patches of tilled land that we had passed, the towns that we had avoided, the thumping of pestles and the occasional sounds of domestic animals, we had seen and heard no sign of human life. It is not strange that for the moment I forgot the threats that had caused us such anxiety. Stopping only to catch our breath and drink and dash over our faces water from a brook, we started up the hill.
O'Hara, ahead of us all, was like a mad man in his eagerness, and Matterson and Gleazen were not far behind him. Even Uncle Seth caught something of their frenzy and assumed an empty show of his old pompousness and sharp manner.