Griggs laughed and shook his head.
“Don’t agree with you, Mr Wilton,” he said. “There goes something else.”
“Eh? Where?” cried Wilton.
“Through the tall grass yonder. I fancy it’s deer of some kind; something small, but I can’t see what it is.”
“Whatever it may be,” said the doctor, “it’s running through the grass in the direction we are going. Look at the grass yonder, it’s waving as something passes through.”
But whatever it was they could not get a glimpse of it, though time after time, when they felt that the game had either been passed or had gone off to right or left, they saw the grass in motion again.
Then it stopped altogether, and the grass began to grow shorter before them, the longer beds being down to their right where the land sloped down, and they here and there caught the glint of water.
“Why, we must be following up the bed of an underground river,” said Bourne, “and this keeps breaking out from time to time, forming quite a chain of little lakes. Yes, there, look; those must be ducks.”
“Ducks they are,” cried Griggs, as a little flock rose cackling from somewhere away to their right and skimmed along over the top of some waving reed-beds, but far out of shot.
“Another proof that we shall not starve,” said the doctor, as they rode slowly on, with the grass in places reaching to their saddle-bows. “Let’s strike away to the left here,” he continued. “I fancy the ground is drier. It is certainly wetter down to the right there, and the grass longer.”