“Well, do you hear it?” I said, in a whisper.
Hannibal shook his head despondently, and then his face lit up as we heard from our right, and quite close at hand, the same faint, gurgling sound, now evidently a cry.
The black rushed on in and out among the trees, a gleam of sunshine catching his black skin once, just as we were passing the gloomiest part; and then, as I was close behind him, he disappeared beyond a group of great pillar-like pine-trees, and when I reached them I came upon him suddenly in a hollow, deep with fir-needles—a natural hole formed by the fall of a monstrous tree, whose root still lay as it had been wrenched out when the tree fell, but the trunk itself had gradually mouldered into dust.
And there was Hannibal busily cutting the hide thongs which bound Pomp, who was lying helpless at the bottom of the hole, with a blanket and a rough skin garment close by him, and beside these five bows and their arrows.
It was evidently the lurking-place of the Indian scouting party, who had suddenly pounced upon the boy, gagged and bound him, for his jaws were forced wide apart, a piece of ragged blanket was thrust into his mouth, and this was kept in by another hide thong tied round and round his face and neck, passing between his jaws as if he were bridled with a leather bit, while his arms and wrists and legs were so securely tied that the poor fellow was perfectly helpless.
“Can’t say he’s black in the face, in the way we mean,” said Morgan, sympathetically, “because, poor lad, it is his nature to be so, look you, but he’s half dead.”
I was already down on my knees chafing the wrists set at liberty, after the hide had been cut away from the boy’s cheeks and the gag taken out, but he made no sign whatever, and we were still rubbing him, and trying to restore the circulation, when Morgan said quickly—
“We can do that in the boat. Up with him, Han, I’ll carry your gun. There must be more Indians near. These were on the advance, I’ll lay, and I wouldn’t say we don’t have a fresh attack to-night.”
Without a word Hannibal handed the gun, took Pomp by the arms, gently swung him on his back, and tore off a strip of blanket with which he tightly bound the boy’s wrists together upon his own chest, so that it left the black’s hands at liberty should he want to use them.
“Go on now,” he said; and he held out his hand for his gun.