Just as he was in despair, there was the sharp ping-wing of a mosquito, and he babbled out something incoherently, made a restless movement, and slapped his face quickly twice, as he had often done before in an attempt to slay one of the noxious little insects.
The light disappeared directly, for the listening Malay was satisfied; and as Ned stretched out his hand again, he found that he was alone.
There was a terrible pause now, and in these brief moments the boy began to think that he had been forsaken, when all at once the hand touched him, glided down to his waist, and drew at it firmly.
He yielded and tried to force himself along, but did little, and that little seemed unnecessary, for strong muscles were at work, and he was almost entirely drawn through the opening till he was quite out; his legs sank down gently, and he was lowered till he felt his feet touch the ground, and a hand which he knew directly for Frank’s, lay on his lips.
As he was puzzling himself as to how it had been managed, he grasped the fact that some one was gliding down the smooth trunk of a palm-tree which grew close to the house, and to which one of the bamboo rafters had been secured, but whether it was Hamet or some other friend he could not tell.
He had no more time for thinking, for two hands were placed on his shoulders, and a voice he now recognised whispered: “Down—creep—follow.”
He grasped the idea at once, and went down on hands and knees, to begin crawling slowly and softly after two bare feet, which he had to touch from time to time to make sure that he was right, while he felt that Frank was behind him, and that he too was touching his boots in the same way.
They were evidently crawling through a tunnel-like track below the undergrowth, a path probably made by a wild beast—unless it was a contrivance to escape from the back of the house in case of emergency—and along this they crawled painfully, with the bushes on either side and overhead. Now a thorn entered hand or knee, now some kind of vegetable hook caught in their clothes, and then they had to creep round some rugged stump of a tree stem to get forward.
The distance was really not great, but it seemed painfully long, and every moment the fugitives were in expectation of having an alarm raised, and seeing the lights of the men in pursuit. But at last, just as Ned had crawled under a bush which scraped and pricked severely, he heard a rustling noise and a peculiar rippling, and was aware of the fact that their guide had risen upright, and that he too could stand.
“Ah,” sighed Frank, directly after, “what a—”