"Why do you stop?" she asked. "What is it that you do not believe?"
"Forgive me," he said. "I was starting to think aloud."
"Be careful, Comrade Colt," she warned him. "Thinking aloud is sometimes fatal;" but she tempered her words with a smile.
Further conversation was interrupted by the sound of the voices of men in the distance. "They are coming," said the girl.
Colt nodded, and the two remained silent, listening to the sounds of approaching voices and footsteps. The men came abreast of them and halted, and Zora, who understood the Aarab tongue, heard one of them say, "The trail stops here. They have gone into the jungle."
"Who can the man be who is with her?" asked another.
"It is a Nasrâny. I can tell by the imprint of his feet," said another.
"They would go toward the river," said a third. "That is the way that I should go if I were trying to escape."
"Wullah! You speak words of wisdom," said the first speaker. "We will spread out here and search toward the river; but look out for the Nasrâny. He has the pistol and the musket of the sheykh."
The two fugitives heard the sound of pursuit diminishing in the distance as the Aarabs forced their way into the jungle toward the river. "I think we had better get out of this," said Colt; "and while it may be pretty hard going, I believe that we had better stick to the brush for awhile and keep on away from the river."