“Of course not,” he argued. “I was sent here to do my best. I’ve done my best, and now I can do no more. I say, how black it is,” he said half-aloud, and then he felt blank, faced as he was by another difficulty—how was he going to get back along the trackless path encumbered with stones and with rifts and tufts of very thorny bushes here and there?
It was a poser.
There was a dull streak of sky overhead, in which a star here and there could be seen blinking and looking pale.
“I can’t see beyond the pony’s head,” thought Chris. “Why, it’s madness to try and ride along a place like this; but it’s horrible to think of sitting here all night, and one couldn’t go to sleep. I’m so hungry too, and—Oh, I say, who’d ever have thought of this? What a mess I’m in!”
There was nothing approaching despair in the boy’s feelings then, neither was there anything akin to fear, unless it was a dread of being suddenly pounced upon by the Indians now.
This thought had quite a comic side to it, and he laughed softly.
“They’d be precious clever—ten times as clever as they’re said to be, with their wonderful sight and hearing—if they did pounce upon me now. Why, look at that.”
It was rather an absurd order which he gave himself, as he stretched out his right-hand at the level of his eye, for to all intents and purposes there was no hand to look at, while as to his pony’s ears, he certainly knew that they were somewhere in front, but that was all.
“Oh, I say,” he sighed, “I am in a mess, and no mistake! If I’d had any gumption in this thick old head I should have slipped a damper cake in my pocket. But who was going to think of eating at a time like that? Perhaps Ned would,” he added, with a soft chuckle; and the idea was so mirthful that he shook a little, but only to grow serious directly.
“There,” he said, “I’ve done my duty, I’m sure, and though I’m in such a hobble things have turned out capitally, and they’ve had plenty of time to get our cliff castle fortified and stored. That’s splendid, and I won’t fidget about the Indians, for they can’t come till to-morrow, and perhaps they’ll never come at all. But I say, this is coming to search for the old gold city! I believe I’d rather have stopped at the plantation killing blight and scratching the scale insects off the peach-twigs. Here, I say, old chap!”