Worst of all he was unarmed, having left his gun beside the fainting Malay.
All he could do was to back as quietly as he could into the jungle, with canes and interlacing growths hindering him at every step; thorns tore and clung to his clothes, and he felt that if any creature gave chase to him it must overtake him directly. His only chance of safety then was in inaction; and fretting with annoyance he crouched there, listening to the shudder-engendering crawling noise made by evidently several loathsome reptiles about the bank of the stream.
After a while this ceased, and he made another attempt to get back to the Malay, going on and on through the darkness, and from time to time shouting to him. He knew that he must be crossing and recrossing his track, and blamed himself angrily for not being more careful. His shouts produced no response, and the matches he lit failed to give him the aid he had hoped; and at last, utterly exhausted, he sank down amidst the dense undergrowth to wait for daylight, with the result that nature would bear no more, and in spite of the help he knew his companion needed, the danger of his companions, and the perils by which he was surrounded from wild beasts, his head sank lower and lower upon his breast, and he slept.
Not willingly, for he kept starting back into wakefulness, and walked to and fro; but all in vain, sleep gradually mastered him; and he sank lower and lower, falling into a deep slumber, and, as he afterwards said, when talking about the adventure, “If I had been in front of a cannon, and knew that it was to be fired, I could only have said—Just wait till I am fast asleep, and then do what you please.”
The sun was up when he started into full wakefulness, and his clothes were drenched with dew.
“If I don’t have a taste of jungle fever after this, it’s strange to me,” he said, hastily swallowing a little white powder from a tiny bottle. “A stitch in time saves nine, and blessed is the salt quinine.”
“Humph! that’s rhyme,” he grunted. “Only to think that I should go to sleep. Ahoy-oy!” he shouted.
There was no reply, and his heart smote him as he felt that he had neglected the poor Malay. Then he felt that he was lost in the jungle; but that did not trouble him much, for he was sure that if he followed the little stream he should find that it entered a larger, and that the larger would run into one larger still, probably into the Parang, whose course he could follow down. But that would be only as a last resource.