They talked for a few minutes longer; then Forrester and Jackson returned to the tent, leaving Mackenzie to take his spell of watching.
The camp was astir early. While the coolies were packing up, and Hamid was preparing breakfast, Forrester sent Sher Jang to the village half a mile away to enlist carriers for the sick man. In an hour the shikari returned with four lithe, well-developed young Mishmis, whose only clothing was a loin-cloth of bark and strips of bamboo coiled about their arms and legs. The villagers' gratitude for the destruction of the man-eater disposed them to undertake any service for their deliverers, especially when that service was to be rewarded with pay.
After breakfast, a litter was quickly constructed of a blanket and two bamboo stalks cut from the border of the stream. On this they placed Captain Redfern; he was still unconscious, and neither spoke nor stirred; and by eight o'clock the caravan was in movement.
Their way led them through the village. Here they waited to receive the thanks of the head-man, who presented them with a number of fowls in token of his gratitude. A crowd of men gathered around the litter, chattering excitedly in sing-song tones. Sher Jang presently drew Forrester aside.
"They talk of prisoners, sahib," he said in a whisper. "There are two strangers; may one of them be the captain sahib's friend?"
"Ask the head-man," said Forrester, eagerly.
The shikari's question seemed to cause the head-man some embarrassment. At first he denied that there was any truth in his young men's gossip, but on Sher Jang's insisting, with threats which Forrester would hardly have countenanced, he confessed that two strangers had indeed been brought into the village the night before. A party of the villagers had been away on an excursion some fifteen miles across the Brahmaputra. (He did not disclose the object of the expedition, but the shikari guessed that it was not unconnected with head hunting.) They were marching through the jungle when suddenly they heard a rustle and hid themselves. Two men came in sight, not naked Abors, as they had expected to see, but strangers, clothed. They had captured them without difficulty, for the men bore no weapons and one of them had lost his right arm, and brought them back to the village.
"Where are they?" asked Forrester, when Sher Jang repeated this story to him.
"In the moshup," the head-man replied, pointing to a spacious building in the heart of the village. It was built on piles, the walls and the sloping roof made of plantain leaves laid one upon another like the tiles of a European house. There the affairs of the community were discussed by day, and the unmarried men slept at night.
"Let me see them," said Forrester, hoping that by some strange coincidence Captain Redfern's friend, having escaped from captivity, had wandered in much the same direction.