“What shall we do?” I whispered back in agony, for it seemed so terrible to have come all these hundreds of miles to find him, and then to sit down, as it were, quite helpless, without taking a step to set him free.
“We can do nothing yet,” he replied, “but wait for an opportunity to get him away.”
“Can you not make some plan?” I whispered back.
“Hist!”
He pressed my hand, for I had been growing louder of speech in my excitement, and just then there was a fresh outburst of voices from within the hut, followed by the trampling of feet and loud shouting, which seemed to be crossing the village and going farther away.
“They have taken the prisoner to—”
Our companion said the first words excitedly, and then stopped short.
“Where?” I exclaimed aloud, as I caught at his arm.
He answered me in the savage tongue, and with an impatient stamp of the foot I turned to the doctor.
“What can we do?” I said. “It makes me wish to be a prisoner too. I should see him, perhaps, and I could talk to him and tell him that help was near.”