“Of course not. What do you say, Rob? Shall we return?”
“Oh no—not on any account; only let’s keep more in the boat.”
“Yes, I think we are safer there,” said Brazier. “But our friend, or enemy, seems to have gone.”
“Wait a bit, sir,” replied Shaddy; “and glad I am that you’re satisfied. Let me listen awhile.”
They were silent, and stood listening as well, and watching the weird effects produced by the fire, as from time to time one of the pieces of wood which the men had planted round the blaze in the shape of a cone fell in, sending up a whirl of flame and glittering sparks high in air, lighting up the trees and making them seem to wave with the dancing flames. The wall of forest across the river, too, appeared to be peopled with strange shadows, and the effect was more strange as the fire approached nearer to the huge butt of the largest tree, throwing up its jagged roots against the dazzling light, so that it was as if so many gigantic stag-horns had been planted at a furnace mouth.
And all the while the fiddling, piping, strumming and hooting, with screech, yell and howl, went on in the curious chorus, for they were indeed deep now in one of Nature’s fastnesses, where the teeming life had remained untouched by man.
“Well,” said Brazier at last to the guide, whose figure, seen by the light of the fire, looked as wild as the surroundings, “had we not better get on board? You can hear nothing through that din.”
“Oh yes, I can, sir,” replied Shaddy. “I’ve got so used to it o’ nights that I can pick out any sound I like from the rest. But we may as well turn in. The fire will burn till morning, and even if it wouldn’t, those chaps of mine wouldn’t go ashore again to-night; and I certainly don’t feel disposed to go and mend the fire myself, for fear of getting something on my shoulder I don’t understand.”
“It has gone, though,” said Brazier.
“Something moving there,” whispered Rob, pointing to the gilded mass of foliage beyond and to the left of the fire.