"You must!" cried the other. "Take the belt from your waist and bind yourself to the tree. Then, when your strength is gone, you will not fall."
Whilst the elder man obeyed these injunctions, Harry turned to Cortes.
"What do you intend to do?" he asked.
"We have no rope," said the guide. "Fernando is at least fifty feet from the path above, and there is no rope fifty feet in length nearer to this place than Kano or Sokoto. However, there is—as you know—a rope-like creeper that grows in the bush. I intend to go back as far as the jungle."
"Can you get there in time?" asked Braid, incredulously.
"My wound is now healed," said the man, "my strength returned. I can but do my best."
Cortes looked up again at his brother.
"Courage!" he cried. "In two days I return."
So saying, he bounded off upon his way. As they watched him pass down the valley, springing from rock to rock, it was apparent that he meant to do all that was humanly possible to effect the salvation of his brother. Even as they looked, his figure grew smaller in the distance, and in a few minutes he was lost to view.
To describe in detail the journey of the younger guide across the mountains would be tedious. The thing can be summed up in a few words: it was magnificent, heroic. Mile upon mile he covered without pausing for breath. For the most part he kept to the valleys, where the atmosphere was stifling and humid, crossing the mountains only when by doing so he could cut off several miles.