“Ah! You hear them coming?”
The woman shook her head violently.
“Croc,” she whispered; and her word was followed by a light, wallowing splash.
“Ugh!” ejaculated the Doctor’s wife, with a shudder. “Come back. They may have returned by the other path and called at the officers’ quarters. They are waiting for us by now perhaps,” she added to herself.
Leading the way back to the bungalow, she hurried in, with straining ears, with the hope that the pair would come out to meet her slowly dying away.
“They must have come back directly we went out, learned that we had gone down to the river, and followed us.”
Stepping in quickly to the servants’ part of the bungalow, she found the other servant fast asleep, ready to stare at her vacantly and wonderingly as she was shaken into wakefulness. The woman had to be spoken to by her fellow-servant before anything could be got from her; and then it was only to learn that the expected ones had not returned.
“Something must have happened,” said the Doctor’s wife, fighting hard now to keep back the horrible forebodings that were troubling her. “Oh! this is not being a woman,” she said. “Come back with me to the river.”
The woman hesitated, but Mrs Morley caught her hand, and they hurried back to the river-side, where, before many minutes of excited watching had passed, at least a dozen horribly suggestive splashes had been heard far out upon the flowing stream.
“Come back,” she whispered to her companion. “I cannot bear it. What!” she ejaculated, as the woman crept more closely to her and whispered something in her ear. “Those horrid creatures drag people into the river sometimes? Yes, yes; I know—I know. Come back. Perhaps they have come,” she continued, trying to speak firmly; and once more she hurried to the bungalow, to find the other servant again fast asleep.