HOT WORK.
Jack led us from the beach over the white coral sand straight up to the wood, and after looking about for a while to make sure of his bearings among the huge fallen logs, hit at last upon a faint trail that led straggling through the forest—a trail scarcely worn into the semblance of a path by the bare feet of naked savages. Following his guidance, we plunged at once, with some doubtful misgivings, into the deep gloom of the woodland, and found ourselves immediately in a genuine equatorial thicket, where mouldering trunks of palms encumbered the vague path, and great rope-like lianas hung down in loops from the trees overhead, to block our way at every second step through that fatiguing underbrush. The day was warm, even as we travelers who know the world judge warmth in the tropical South Pacific; and the moist heat of that basking, swampy lowland, all laden with miasma from the decaying leaves, seemed to oppress us with its deadly effluvia and its enervating softness at every yard we went through the jungle. Moreover, we had to carry our arms and ammunition among that tangled brake; and as our rifles kept catching continually in the creepers that drooped in festoons from the branches, while our feet got simultaneously entangled in the roots and trailing stems that straggled underfoot, you can easily imagine for yourself that ours was indeed no pleasant journey. However, we persevered with dogged English perseverance; the sailors tramped on and wiped their foreheads with their sleeves from time to time; while poor Jack marched bravely at our head with an indomitable pluck which reflected the highest credit on Mr. Macglashin's training.
The only one who seemed to make light of the toil was our black boy, Nassaline.
We went single file, of course, along the narrow trail, which every here and there divided to right or left in the midst of the brake with most puzzling complexity. At every such division or fork in the track, Jack halted for a moment and cast his eye dubiously to one side and the other, at last selecting the trail that seemed best to him. Nassaline, too, helped us not a little by his savage instinct for finding his way through trackless jungle. For my own part, I could never have believed any road on earth could possibly be so tortuous; and at last, at the end of the twenty-fifth turn or thereabouts, I ventured to say in a very low voice (for we were stealing along in dead silence), "Why, Jack, I believe you're leading us round and round in a circle, and you'll bring us out again in the end at the very same bay where we first landed!"
"Hush!" Jack answered, with one finger on his lip. "We're drawing near the outskirts of the village now. You must be very quiet. I can just see the grass roof of Taranaka's temple peeping above the brushwood to the right. In three minutes more we shall be out in the open."
And sure enough he told the truth. Almost as he ceased speaking, the noise of savage voices fell full upon my ear from the village in front, and I could hear the natives, in their hideous corroboree, beating hard upon their hollow drums of stretched skin, and shouting in the dance to their drunken comrades.
It was a ghastly noise, but it did our hearts good just then to hear it.
I could almost have clapped my hand upon Jack's back and given him three cheers for his gallant guidance when we saw the village plot opening up in front of us, and the naked savages, in their war-paint and feathers, guarding the door of Taranaka's temple. But the necessity for caution compelled me to preserve a solemn silence. So we crouched as still as mice behind a clumpy thicket of close-leaved tiro bushes, and peeped out from our ambush through the dense foliage to keep an eye upon the scene till the Albatross hove into sight in the harbor.
"My father and my mother must still be there," Jack whispered under his breath, but in a deep tone of relief. "The Tanaki men are guarding them exactly as they did when Martin and I left the island. I almost think I can see Miriam's head through the open door. We shall be in time still to deliver them from these bloodthirsty wretches."
"In what direction must we look for the Albatross?" I whispered back. "Will she come in from the south there?"