Gaining fresh courage, he had very little difficulty in creeping out from beneath the great mat and drawing himself upwards till he lay out in the darkness upon the roof, panting heavily as he breathed in the soft, cool, night air.
“Now, can I find this hole again?” he said to himself. “Oh yes, all right. And what’s this?” For his hand encountered a good-sized stone secured in its place by a thin rotan bound over it, and passed through the thatch and under one of the battens. “That’s all right,” he said to himself, as he began to crawl up the slope towards the ridge; and in doing so he found that flat, rough, slaty pieces of stone followed at intervals to weight the roof, and formed supports for his feet, so that he was able to creep with the greatest ease right up to the ridge.
“Be quite jolly,” he said, “if it wasn’t for the feeling that I may be crawling over millions of snakes. However, I am in for it now, and I must chance it. Now about getting down.”
He lay upon the back slope of the building, resting with one arm over the ridge, listening intently, knowing that he must be gazing in the direction of the sentry; but the silence was as intense as the darkness, and he still hesitated as to whether he should lower himself down again in the direction from which he had come.
Feeling, however, that if he descended from there it would be into the jungle, which he knew from experience was one tangled and matted mass, impervious to human beings, he decided to go on, and proceeding very cautiously, he began to lower himself down towards the eaves by the help of the many stones which offered support to hand or foot.
“Why, it’s just like going downstairs,” thought the lad; and then, as if to prove it was not so easy, one of the stones, upon which he was bearing with his foot, slipped from its rotan tie and began to rustle loudly down before him.
Then there was a sharp hiss, which made the lad cling tightly and begin to feel a return of the paralysing shudder which had unnerved him a few minutes before. The hiss was repeated, and followed by a sound like a quick reiteration of the word Yah; and then Peter Pegg’s heart began to palpitate heavily as he realised that it was a human utterance coming from the direction of the sentry’s tree, and followed by a quick movement as of some one advancing towards the stable door.
“You brute! How you frightened me!” said the lad to himself, as, obeying his next impulse, he tore a stone that was held in its place by the thin cane, raised it above his head, and hurled it with all his might in the direction of the sentry.
“There’s a fool!” he muttered to himself as he lay full length, listening to a gabbling, threatening utterance from below, which was slurred with hisses and dotted with angry ejaculations. “He’s a-swearing at me in his ugly lingo,” thought Peter. “Can’t see him, so he can’t see me, and of course he can’t tell who it is up here. Here, I know,” he continued, as there was a series of hisses such as would be uttered by one who was trying to drive some obnoxious creature away.
“Hississh!” cried the sentry again.