"I'll go, Frank," he said to Morton. "Let me go and have all the honour and glory."
Morton and Brown both replied in the negative, and Brown intimated to Columbus that to-morrow Charlie should go, but now it was nearly night and he wanted a sleep. This seemed to satisfy the blackfellow, who evidently wanted to get away himself, and presently, as soon as he thought the attention of the party was not directed towards him, he disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.
"I have not got to the bottom of this little affair yet," said Morton; "but I think we shall to-night. What do you say to paying a visit to these cliffs as soon as it is pitch dark—I have the bearing?"
"The very thing I was going to suggest. Charlie, it strikes me that our new friend wants to make long pig of you."
"What's that?" asked Charlie.
"Well, a favourite dish amongst some natives who have an acquired taste for human flesh."
"Do you think he's a cannibal?" said the boy, rather aghast.
"I should be sorry to slander a stranger, but it certainly looks something like it."
As soon as it was quite dark the party set out on their way to the cliffs, which they judged to be about a mile distant; it was a difficult matter shaping a course by the stars amongst the gloom cast by the surrounding boulders, but an occasional murmur of sound helped them on, and after scrambling and twisting about they found themselves near the low cliffs. Here Billy was told to strip and reconnoitre, and his black figure was lost amongst the rocks almost before he seemed to have made a step. He was absent nearly half an hour; then a subdued whistle announced his return, and in a low voice he communicated to Morton the result of his investigations.
About four or five hundred yards from where they were waiting there was a cave in the cliff, and the blacks it appears were in there. Billy had gone close to the entrance, but could see only a light in the distance, for, according to him, "hole bin go long way".