“Find means for us to escape.”
“That’s what I want, sir, so as just to have the way ready. But it’s no use to get out and me to have to carry you on my back.”
Archie sighed, for he was forced to accept the truth of his companion’s words. He lay thinking then of his interview with the Doctor, and he said to himself:
“I wanted something to take the boyishness out of me, and this has come and swept it away at one stroke and for ever.—Look here,” he said aloud; “look round and see whether it is possible for you to get out—I mean, just think the matter over so that you may be able to contrive to get outside after dark and examine our surroundings a bit.”
“That’s all settled, sir. There’s no breaking through the door, but I have been thinking that I might climb up inside here, sir, get as far as them bamboo rafters, and squeeze a way out on to the roof through them palm-leaf mats. Pst!”
“What is it?”
Peter Pegg held up one finger, and then pointed sharply towards the door.
“Some one there? I don’t hear anything.”
“No, sir. That topper you got seems to have made you a bit deaf,” said the lad, as he crouched close up to his companion’s head. “I don’t suppose if we spoke loud that any one would understand us; but there’s some one outside there, and after a bit I am going to look if he ain’t gone.”
The lad waited for a while, and then rose and began to pace slowly up and down the front of his prison, and ended by climbing quickly up by the door and peering out through the hole the elephant had made.