“Can’t find um. All go long back to big hole. Hidum. Say Mass Joe come back long o’ Jimmy-Jimmy.”
It seemed probable that they would make for our hiding-place, but I was very reluctant to go and leave my friends in the lurch, so I detained Jimmy and we sat listening, the black making me sit down.
“Rest um leggums,” he said. “Run much fas den.”
We stayed there listening for what must have been the space of half an hour, and during that time we could hear the shouting and rapping of trees of the blacks as they were evidently searching the bush, but there was no sound of excitement or fighting, neither did it seem to me that there were any exulting shouts such as might arise over the capture of prisoners.
This gave me hope, and in the belief that I might find my companions at the hiding-place I was about to propose to Jimmy that we would go on, when he jumped up.
“No stop no longer. Black fellow come along fas. Get away.”
The noises made by the blacks were plainly coming nearer, and I sprang to my feet, trying to pierce the darkness, but everywhere there were the dimly-seen shapes of trees so close that they almost seemed to lower and their branches to bear down upon our heads; there was the fresh moist scent of the dewy earth and leaves, and now and then a faint cry of some bird, but nothing to indicate the way we ought to go.
I turned to Jimmy.
“Can you tell where the cave is?” I said.
“No: Jimmy all dark,” he answered.