"How shall we find the way?" asked Forrester, in the quiet tone he had employed before.
"I'll show you," said the man, eagerly, trying again to rise. "No, I'm dead beat," he added, falling back. "I'll follow you up. I made a jotting; you can't miss them. What are you waiting for?"
"The paper. Where is it?"
The man wriggled within the blanket, and a look of agony distorted his face as he felt his helplessness.
Forrester quickly loosed the wrappings.
"Which pocket?" he asked.
But a stream of incoherent babbling poured from the exhausted man's lips. He lay passive as Forrester felt in his breast pocket and drew forth a small leather case. Opening it, Forrester discovered a folded paper lying loose. He spread it out, and saw what at first seemed to be nothing but a smudge. But when he held the paper nearer to the firelight, he distinguished a design. It was disappointing, puzzling. A pencil line slanted from the left-hand top corner to the middle of the sheet, then branched horizontally to the right. The pencil marks had rubbed and smudged in the man's pocket, but looking at them closely, Forrester made out a few words in addition to the line. At the angle he read "Camel's Hump," at the end on the right, "Monkey Face." There was nothing more.
CHAPTER II
A COUNCIL OF WAR
Forrester sat musing on what he had learnt from the sick man's broken phrases and the scrap of paper. It was little enough. The stranger's companion, Beresford, had been captured, presumably by natives, at a spot four days' march distant in the hills. His friend had come alone over at least a hundred miles of wild country to seek help. The pencil line traced his course; the names no doubt roughly described conspicuous natural features that would serve as landmarks on his return. But who were the captors? Where was the place of durance? What did he mean by "the shutter"? In what direction lay the point on the route called "Monkey Face"? Without answers to these questions it seemed to Forrester that nothing could be attempted on behalf of the prisoner.