They set forward without delay, sometimes climbing, sometimes walking, on the mountain-side. About four o'clock in the afternoon they sighted the forest of which the man had spoken. It opened out into a mangrove swamp, thousands of feet below them, where the heat hung like a fog.
Among the trees they found themselves in a kind of twilight. By then the sun was setting; but as the daylight dwindled a great moon arose. Cortes led them to a place, on the verge of a deep ravine, where there was an old tree with a hollow trunk that looked as if it had been struck by lightning.
"You and your friend will remain here," said the man to Harry. "I will be as quick as I can, but in any case I cannot be back until midnight. If I do not return by then, you will know that I am dead; then—if you are wise—you will go back to Calabar. If the Germans come, you will hide." And he pointed to the hollow tree.
Without another word he set forward on his way, gliding down the face of the living rock like some gigantic lizard.
The two boys found themselves in a place romantic but terrible. On every side they were surrounded by the impenetrable hills. The trees of the forest stood forth in the semi-darkness like great, ghostly giants. Somewhere near at hand a mountain stream roared and thundered over the rocks. The breeze brought to their nostrils the smell of the swamp lower down the valley. The hollow tree stood on the edge of the bush. A few yards away was the ravine, the bottom of which was wide and bare and stony.
Throughout the earlier part of the night they possessed their souls in patience. It was stiflingly hot after the cool mountain air.
Harry looked at his watch. It was midnight. There was no sign of the brothers.
Suddenly they heard a stone shifted from its place somewhere in the forest to go rolling down into the ravine. Both stood motionless and expectant.
"I heard something," said Braid.
"So did I," said Harry.