“Quite right, Tom.”
“Well, nothing couldn’t have taken place without them seeing it. But something did take place, and I’ll tell you why. If Mas’r Landell had only walked off somewhere to see how his coffee or cocoa was growing, and where it wanted hoeing up, do you think that Muster Indian there would have been above saying so? Not he, Mas’r Harry. But what does he do now? Why, he turns stunt, and won’t answer a word; and what does that show, eh? Why, that, as I said before, we didn’t ought to have left your poor uncle, who’s been knocked on the head, and robbed, and then hidden away. Well, do you know what we’ve got to do now, Mas’r Harry?”
“Search for him, of course,” I said emphatically.
“To be sure, and both together, or we may get knocked on the head too; and I shouldn’t like that on account of Sally Smith and Miss—”
“Tom,” I said, “your tongue runs too fast. Let us have more action. Come along. And as to your knocking-on-the-head work, we have nothing to fear there so long as we have no gold about us.”
“Gently there, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom. “We’ve got no gold about us, I know; but how many people know that, eh? Well, I’ll tell you—two; and I’m one, and you’re the other. You keep a sharp look-out, and don’t you trust nobody at all with a red skin, and only two or three who have got white.”
As we conversed we kept on advancing towards the plantation rows, when Tom stooped down so as to gaze intently at the ground, and then trotted slowly along, as if seeking for a place where the grass was broken down—an example I followed, to halt at length, with the Indians watching me intently from the shed as I reached a spot nearly opposite to the part of the verandah where I had parted with my uncle.
“Come here, Tom!” I said in a low voice; and he ran up. “What do you think of this?”
“Been beaten-down and then smoothed over again,” said Tom excitedly. “Something has been dragged over here, Mas’r Harry.”
“So I thought, Tom,” I exclaimed. “Now let us try whether an Englishman can follow a trail; for it looks as if my uncle must have passed along here.”