“Tell you what I don’t think first, my lad,” replied Shaddy: “I don’t think it’s Indians, because I haven’t seen a sign of ’em, and if I had I fancy they’d be peaceable, stupid sort of folk. No: he’s got into trouble with some beast or another.”
“Killed?”
“Nay, nay; that’s the very worst of all. There’s hundreds of ways in which he might be hurt; and what I think is, that he has started to come back, and turned faint and laid down, and perhaps gone to sleep, so that we passed him; or perhaps he has lost his way.”
“Lost his way?” cried Rob, with a shiver of dread.
“Yes, my lad. It’s of no use to hide facts now.”
“Then we shall never find him again, and he will wander about till he lies down and dies.”
“Ah! now you’re making the worst of it again, sir. He might find the way out again by himself, but we’ve got to help him. Maybe we shall be able to follow his tracks; you and me has got to try that: an Indian or a dog would do it easily. Well, you and me ought to have more stuff in us than Indians or dogs, and if we make up our minds to do it, why, we shall. So, come along, and let’s see if we can’t muster up plenty of British pluck, say a bit of a prayer like men, and with God’s help we’ll find him before we’ve done.”
He held out his hand to Rob, who made a snatch at it and caught it between his, to cling to it tightly as he gazed in the rough, sun-blackened face before him, too much oppressed by emotions to utter a word.
But words were not needed in the solemn silence of that grand forest. Their prayer for help rose in the midst of Nature’s grandest cathedral, with its arching roof of boughs, through which in one spot came a ray of brilliant light, that seemed to penetrate to Rob’s heart and lighten him with hope; and then once more they swung round and plunged into the forest depths.