"It will be getting light soon. We must hide her now. Cannot get further until to-morrow night."
Although Ronald Mervyn, struggling along in the darkness, had not noticed it, the party had for the last hour turned off from the line they had before been following. They stopped by a little stream, running down the valley. Here a native refilled the gourds, and Mary Armstrong felt better after a drink of water.
"I think," Ronald said to her, "that if you were to bathe your face and hands it would refresh you. There is a rock here just at the edge of the stream, I am sure your feet must be sore and blistered. It will be half an hour before there is a gleam of light, and I should recommend you to take off your shoes and stockings and paddle your feet in the water."
"That would be refreshing," the girl said. "My feet are aching dreadfully. Now please tell me all that has happened, and how you came to be here."
Sitting beside her, Ronald told her what had been done from the time when his party arrived and beat off the natives attacking the waggons.
"How can I thank you enough?" she said, when he had finished. "To think that you have done all this for me."
"Never mind about thanks, Miss Armstrong; we are not out of the wood yet, our dangers are only half over, and if it were not that I trust to the cunning of our good friend Kreta and his Fingoes I should have very little hope of getting out of this mess. I think it is just beginning to get light, for I can make out the outlines of the trunks of the trees, which is more than I could do before. I will go and ask Kreta what he is going to do, and by the time I come back perhaps you had better get your shoes on again, and be ready for a start. I don't suppose we shall go far, but no doubt he will find some sort of hiding-place." Kreta, in fact, was just giving instructions to his men.
"We are going out to find some good place to hide away in to-day," he said. "In the morning they search all about the woods. We must get into shelter before it light enough for the men on hill tops to see down through trees. You stop here quiet. In half an hour we come back again. There is plenty time; they no find out yet that woman gone."
In a few minutes Mary Armstrong joined Ronald.
"How do you feel now?" he asked.