In the talk that ensued it was decided that we would wait a couple of days, and then go by night and thoroughly examine the village. Jimmy would be able to point out the hut where my father was confined, and then if opportunity served we would bring him away, lie hidden here for a few days till the heat of the pursuit was over, and then escape back to the coast.
I would not own to the doctor that I had my doubts, and he owned afterwards to me that his feeling was the same. So we both acted as if we had for certain discovered him of whom we came in search, and waited our time for the first venture.
It was dangerous work hunting for food at so short a distance from the village, but our black followers, aided by Jimmy, were very successful, their black skins protecting them from exciting surprise if they were seen from a distance, and they brought in a good supply of fish every day simply by damming up some suitable pool in the little stream in whose bank our refuge was situated. This stream swarmed with fish, and it was deep down in a gully between and arched over by trees. The bows and arrows and Jimmy’s spear obtained for us a few birds, and in addition they could always get for us a fair supply of fruit, though not quite such as we should have chosen had it been left to us. Roots, too, they brought, so that with the stores we had there was not much prospect of our starving.
In fact so satisfactory was our position in the pleasant temperate cave that Jack Penny was in no hurry to move.
“We’re just as well here as anywhere else,” he said; “that is, if we had found your father.”
“And got him safe here,” he added after a pause.
“And the black chaps didn’t come after us,” he said after a little more thought.
“And your mother wasn’t anxious about you,” he said, after a little more consideration.
“You’ll find such a lot more reasons for not stopping, Jack Penny,” I said, after hearing him out, “that you’ll finish by saying we had better get our work done and return to a civilised country as soon as we can.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Jack slowly. “I don’t care about civilised countries: they don’t suit me. Everybody laughs at me because I’m a bit different, and father gives it to me precious hard sometimes. Give me Gyp and my gun, and I should be happy enough here.”