It would have delighted him very much to punch Dave’s head.
“That’s what I said—Dan Creed,” resumed Dave. “We know ’em both.”
Petit silenced them by a motion.
The sportsmen were trooping along the track, gun in hand, with their eyes in the air looking up at the fig-trees, watching for pigeons.
It had been Dan Creyton’s idea, that expedition. He wanted to get George out in the open air, away from his troubles, to occupy his mind in some sport. There is no medicine like this for the mind and nerves, and already George was forgetting the black cloud which had recently lowered upon him. The primal instinct of the hunter can always be reverted to by a sane man, whom civilization has in one way or another made sick. An hour’s fishing, by some shady pool, under the open sky is worth more than a bottle of drugs.
They strode along in the cool morning air, making little noise on the jungle path, carpeted with leaves. Closer and closer they came to that group of three in the scrub.
Tom and Dave could hear their hearts beating in their heads. Petit lay upon the ground, flattened out like a panther, his knife ready to his hand. He had put Tom on one side and Dave on the other, within reach of his arm, giving them to understand plainly enough that at the first attempt to communicate with the strangers he would choke the life out of them.
The boys knew well enough they would have little chance in the strong clutch of those vice-like fingers, because Petit had given their necks a sample squeeze with his huge forefinger and thumb.
So they lay still, fearing, hoping, despairing—both more or less hysterical, both experiencing great difficulty in restraining something which kept rising up in their throats—something choking and unpleasant which would otherwise have developed into a sob.
Dan Creyton and George passed them within a distance of ten yards, and they dared not cry out or give the slightest sign of warning. Tom said afterwards that he never felt like he did then except once, and that was when he crawled down a hollow log after a bandicoot and got stuck. It was just the same smothering, suffocating feeling.