Chapter Thirty One.
An Awakening.
“You can’t be sure, Pete. These elephant-paths through the jungle are all alike. There’s the same half-dark, dense heat, the tangled walls on either side, the overhanging trees and loops of prickly rotan suspended overhead ready to catch you. How can you be sure that this is one that you have been along before?”
“I d’know, sir. What you say is very right, but I seem to feel that I’ve been along here before, and old Rajah must have been, or he wouldn’t go swinging along as if he felt that he’d got nearly to the end of his journey. Shall I try and ask Mr Bantam there?”
“Oh no,” said Archie wearily. “It’s so hard trying to make him understand, and I always feel in doubt when you have tried.”
“Well, sir, we shall soon know whether it is, for I don’t believe we are more than two or three miles from headquarters.”
“I’d give anything for you to be right, Pete, for I am nearly done up.”
“I know you are, sir, and I might say, so am I; for long enough it has seemed as if the hinge of my back was giving way, and when the helephant gives one of his worst rolls it just seems as if he’d jerk my head off. But cheer up, sir! I think it’s all right, and we have done splendidly. We might have had to pull up and fight all the Malay chaps from up there by the Rajah’s hunting-box. Of course we should have made a good stand of it, but how are you going to dodge spears in a narrow place like this? There, cheer up, sir! When you look happy over it I feel as if I am ready for anything; but when you go down in the dumps I haven’t a bit of pluck left in me.”