It seemed quite a space of time before from just below I heard a discordant yell which thrilled through me, and actually for the moment made me loose my hold. But I was clinging fast again directly, as the yell was answered by a couple of score of throats; there was the rapid beat of feet, the crunching of dead sticks and crushing of bushes, and I clung there with closed eyes, listening to a confused gabble of excited voices, and waiting for what I seemed to know would come next.
For in my excitement I could in fancy picture the Indians examining the cut thongs lying where they had dropped by the trees, and then one great stalwart fellow took a step out from the rest and pointed up to where we two clung forty feet from the ground, and I saw a score of arrows fitted to the bow-strings, and their owners prepare to shoot and bring us down.
I cannot attempt to describe the sensation that thrilled through me in what was almost momentary, nor the wild thoughts flashing in my brain. I only know that I wondered whether the arrow which pierced me would hurt much, and thought what a pity it was that the tree we were in did not hang over the stream, so that we might have fallen in the water.
But no flight of arrows rattled among the boughs, and all we heard was the gabble of excited voices. Then came yell after yell from a little distance farther away from the settlement, and from the excited questioning which seemed to follow, I knew that a number of the Indians had returned to the camp to talk hurriedly to those beneath the tree.
Then there were a couple of yells given in a peculiar tone, and a faint series of sounds reached us, suggesting to me that the whole party had spread out, and were quickly and cautiously creeping along through the forest from the edge of the stream for some distance in, and then all was still.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
A pair of warm lips at my ear made me start again.
“Dey all ’tupid, dem Injum. I know dey nebber tink we get up tree. Think we run home. All gone. Come down.”