Terry's joyous urge carried him swiftly, so that in an hour he dropped out of the foothills and into the heat of the jungled lowlands. At noon he climbed Sears' steps and dropped into a porch chair, his clothes wet with perspiration and torn by contact with brush and thorn, for he had cut straight through the woods.
He had nearly emptied Sears' water bottle when he saw the big planter coming out of a wonderful growth of hemp. Sears advanced slowly, deep in thought, not looking up till he had mounted the last step. At sight of Terry's grinning features he recoiled violently, then as the lad rose, he jumped forward to wring his hand furiously. Incapable of coherent speech for several minutes, he at last mastered his vocal cords.
"Man! I thought you were a ghost!" he cried.
Terry sketched his journey into the Hills, and added a brief account of the experiences he and the Major had undergone. Learning that the Major was also safe, Sears called a Bogobo boy and issued instructions that sent him scurrying into one of the Bogobo huts. In a few minutes he returned bearing a small agong and striker.
Under Sears' directions he hung it upon a pole in front of the house and struck it sharply, again and again. As the deep notes carried out through the still, hot woods Sears motioned to him to desist and turned to Terry.
"Listen!" he exclaimed, intent, his hand on Terry's shoulder.
In a moment another agong, somewhere close to the south, sounded several times, then another further away, then another, another. Soon the noon stillness of the brush pulsed with the mystic multi-tones of scores of far agongs rung from plantations. Slowly the murmur grew as hundreds of agongs rung by Bogobos in the foothills took up the signal, flooding the hemplands with a glad, bronze chorus.
Sears gripped Terry's shoulder hard, his eyes brimming.
"That's the signal we fixed up," he said. "Welcome home!"
He hovered over Terry, questioning, commenting, incredulous over the Major's marriage, overjoyed that the quinine he had given Terry had been a factor in his recovery. After lunch Terry borrowed Sears' best pony and rode away with the planter's profane benedictions in his ears.