"At this rate we will never make it," said Dan Carter, mopping the moisture from his face.
"Push on anyhow," said Dick. "There's nothing else to do."
He and Dan were in the lead, with Mutaba, who directed his axe-wielding blacks. The guide kept watching for any sign of hostilities, running ahead whenever there was a clear space on the trail and searching for tracks or broken twigs which might indicate that some enemy had passed that way.
Suddenly he stopped short, crouched low in the brush and raised one hand high as a warning. Dick watched him draw his bow and take careful aim at something in the tangle of vines far ahead, then as he let the arrow fly, a creature that might have been man or beast fled through the undergrowth in terror.
With a grunt of anger, Mutaba leaped forward and pursued it, while Dick and Dan did their best to keep up. But the black slid through the tangled growth like a snake, while the two boys were blocked constantly, so they were soon left behind.
Finally when they did overtake him, Mutaba was squatting on his haunches, examining everything on the ground and in the brush with the trained eyes of a tracker.
"It was a man," he said briefly. "My arrow missed, for there was no trace of blood on any branch or on the ground."
Mutaba moved a pace forward and pointed to some crushed vegetation, which to the boys was meaningless.
"It was a Muta-Kunga tribesman," said the tracker. "A young warrior, who knows the way of the jungle."
"A regular Sherlock Holmes:" remarked Dan. "Next thing he will tell us that the fellow was exactly five feet, eight and a half inches tall, had a hair lip and wore grey spats and a lion skin."