“I don’t know. Not much,” faltered Helen, as she struggled to her feet, the girl meanwhile hastily rolling the sarong round Helen’s arm, catching then at her hand, and half dragging her through the tangled bushes, whose thorns checked them, tearing their garb, while every now and then they had to stoop and creep beneath the trees.
In this way they had made some fifty yards towards safety, when a fierce snarling growl, which they both knew well enough to be that of a tiger, sounded away in front; and almost simultaneously there was the report of a gun, then of another, and lights could be seen in the direction from which they had come.
“Which is it to be,” said the girl, hoarsely, “Murad or the tiger? Say which you will choose, for they will either of them kill us without mercy?”
Volume Three—Chapter Nine.
Another Escape.
“The Inche Maida need have someone to drill and discipline her men,” whispered Chumbley to his companion, as, after walking up and down for a few minutes, they saw the two Malays, whose duty it evidently was to guard their prison, light their pipes and then stroll away, their course being for a time indistinctly made out by the faint glow of one of the bowls.
Mutually regretting that they had not made an attempt to escape sooner, since they were finding the task so easy, Hilton led the way, going cautiously step by step upon their blind quest of a path which should lead them to the river.
That such a path would exist they felt pretty sure, the river being the great highway of the land; and paths were so few, that they were pretty certain of its being the right one if they should hit upon a track.