“Might have given old Two-tails some more,” he muttered. “This won’t do. We shall eat some, but there will be a lot to spare, and if they come and find the basket like this they will grow stingy; and I can use any amount for our friend.”
Taking up the basket, he carried it to one corner, raised a few leaves, and placed part of the bananas in the clearing, before lightly covering them up, taking the basket back to Archie’s side, and placing several of the yellow fruits close to his hand.
“I might go to sleep,” he thought, “and they will be ready for him.”
Then settling himself down near the empty water-jar, which he carefully wiped out and turned upside-down to dry, he began to munch his own share of the fruit, making up his mind the while to think out thoroughly a good plan for their escape.
“One helephant,” he said softly, “two spears, one officer, and one private who knows how to use the spears. Wanted: two krises and how to get away. Well, there’s nothing like thinking, so here goes.”
Chapter Twenty Four.
“R-a-a-a-ah!”
Three weeks had passed away. Morning had come at last, and Archie Maine was beginning to breathe more freely, after passing a very bad night. For, as if it had scented an easy prey close at hand, a deep-voiced tiger had startled him from his watch about an hour before midnight by a deep-toned roar which had made the young subaltern stand half-paralysed for a few minutes, feeling as he did that there was nothing but the partly woven, fence-like wall of the big stable between him and the most savage beast that ranges the Eastern jungles.