‘Feed the father?’ Baker cried.
‘Yes. Them naked chaps say father’s child, not mother’s. Women cry over him. You hear?’
‘Lord ’a mercy, I must see this!’ And before Tuzzadeen could interfere he opened the door.
Wild uproar broke out on the instant, men shouted, women screamed and wailed—in a solid mass they rushed from the spot. Tuzzadeen caught Baker and ran him back up the passage, the sailors following. They fled for their lives, slid down the notched log and along the path, pursued by terrific clamour—but not by human beings apparently. Perceiving this, Tuzzadeen stopped.
‘I go back,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Them kill us in jungle when them like. I make trade. You pay?’
‘Anything—anything!’ cried Baker. ‘We haven’t even our guns!’
So the Malay went back to negotiate, but they ran on—came to the awful bridge, Baker foremost. He reached the middle. One of the sailors behind would wait no longer—advanced and both fell headlong down. The sailor was killed instantly; Baker, in the middle of the bridge, dropped among the branches of a tree.
There he lay, bruised, half conscious, until Tuzzadeen’s shouts roused him, and he answered faintly.
‘Hold on!’ cried the Malay. ‘We come good time, Tuan Cap’n! Before dark!’ Six hours to wait at least!
Baker began to stir—found he had no limbs broken, and thought of descending. His movements were quickened by the onslaught of innumerable ants, not a venomous species happily. But in climbing down he remarked that the tree-top was loaded with orchids, which he tore off and dropped; long before nightfall he met the search-party, toiling up the ravine from its opening on the shore.