“Have I been asleep?” he said half-wonderingly.
“Asleep! Yes; and I want to know what you have found out.”
“Let’s have a drink and something to eat first. I feel half-starved.”
“Yes, of course—of course. Go on.”
“Now,” said Peter, after a ravenous attack upon the bread and fruit. “Oh, here, this is good! Only I think it’s time we got some meat. I’d give anything for a bit of commissariat bacon. You want to hear what I did, sir. Well, it was next to nothing but crawl like a slug in and out amongst trees, scratting one’s self with that long, twining, climbing palm, and not once daring to stand up and walk.”
“Well, but what did you find out?”
“Nothing at all, sir, except that there’s a bit of a lodge here which seems as if it might belong to the Rajah, and be where he lived and slept.”
“And was he there?”
“Oh no, sir; there’s nobody there, only about a dozen Malay chaps, besides them as come to see us; and then there’s a very big helephant-shelter, like this, only quite new and good, at the end of that there left path; and right away beyond that, in a sort of clearing where the jungle has been cut down—if I didn’t tell you before—there’s some big trees and a sort of scaffold of bamboos that looks like a shelter such as any one would climb up to shoot tigers, and under it some bones, just as if a buffalo had been tied up for a bait.”
“Yes, I see,” said Archie. “Well, go on.”