He was weak now, very. But he was sensible and able to swallow a little honey and milk, that Jack had culled and drawn with his own hands.
And that day, lo! the sun again shone out, the birds that had been mute for weeks once more remembered their low but beautiful songs, and surely in this swamp-island never did the wealth of flowers that grew everywhere put forth a more dazzling show. Twisted and pinched they had been while the dank fog hung over them, but now they opened in all their wild wanton glory, and vied with each other in the brightness of their colours, their vivid blues, whites, pinks, and crimsons, and velvety sulphurs, and chocolate browns.
They grew up over the trees, borne aloft on climbing stems, they canopied the bushes, they carpeted the ground, and hung their charming festoons round the fruit itself.
But yet in spite of all this wealth of beauty Harry longed to be off, and almost the first words he spoke, though in a voice but little louder than a whisper, were—
“Take me away. Take me away out of here.”
Those words made Somali Jack and Raggy very happy, and even the other boys were rejoiced, for truth to tell, they all dearly loved their brave young master.
All that day Jack and his comrades were very busy indeed. They were making an ambulance hammock. When complete it was simplicity itself.
Only a couple of strong bamboos of great length, and between them a sheet of grass-cloth, add to this a rude pillow stuffed with withered moss, and the whole is complete.
It was a long and a slow journey which they started on next morning, before even the stars had paled before the advancing beams of the sun. But ere ever he had set behind the western hills it had been safely accomplished.
And so by degrees, as Harry’s strength could bear it, stage after stage of the return march was got over and at length, to the invalid’s inexpressible joy, they arrived once more at the banks of the lake of the hundred isles. Walda quickly gathered together an immense heap of withered grass, and quickly had it on flame; then he put on top of it green branches, so that a dense volume of white-blue smoke rose up on the evening air.