“That’ll do,” he whispered back. “Come along. All right! Have you got him?”
“Whom?” I said, stumbling painfully up into the cave, where I threw myself down.
“Your father.”
“No,” I said dismally, “and we’ve lost the doctor and Ti-hi. Poor fellows, I’m afraid they are taken. But, Jack Penny, we are right. My father is a prisoner in the village.”
“Then we’ll go and fetch him out, and the doctor too. Ti-hi can take care of himself. I’d as soon expect to keep a snake in a wicker cage as that fellow in these woods; but come, tell us all about it.”
I partook, with a sensation as if choking all the while, of the food he had waiting, and then, as we sat there waiting for the day in the hope that the doctor might come, I told Jack Penny the adventures of the night, Jimmy playing an accompaniment the while upon his nose.