I gripped his shoulders and he managed to stand upright. The dawn came with tropic suddenness at that moment, and I saw that he was bleeding from a nasty wound above the right temple, while he limped painfully as I helped him across a small cleared patch near the tree.
"I've hurt my leg," he cried, "but I'm going to get to the camp. If I fall, Verslun, I want you to lend me a hand. Promise to help me, will you? She—Miss Barbara, you know, old man. She is everything to me. Give me a hand if I tumble down."
"I promise," I answered, and he wrung my hand as we started off through the clawing, scratching vines that tripped us up as we tried to fight our way forward.
If we had thought on the night before that the quarter mile of country that lay between the camp and the rocky wall was a difficult stretch to negotiate, we were more than doubly certain of its impenetrable character now that daylight had come. How we had ever managed to get through it in the darkness was a mystery that we tried to solve as we attempted to make our way back. The place was a mad riot of thorny undergrowth, laced and bound with vines that were as strong as wire hawsers. The lianas appeared human to us; they lassoed our legs and flung us sprawling upon our faces whenever we tried to quicken our speed. Thorns of a strange fishhook variety drove their barbed points into us, and each yard of the tortuous path that we cut through the devilish vines was marked by a scrap of our clothing, which the tormenting thorns seemed to wave aloft as an emblem of victory.
"He'll beat us!" gasped Holman. "I'm all in, Verslun; that fall has finished me."
"Keep at it!" I said. "We must be near the camp by now."
"We've walked three miles," muttered Holman. "We've lost our way."
"No, we haven't!" I cried. "We've struck a bad patch, but we'll get there soon."
The youngster clenched his teeth and endeavoured to forget the agony of his leg, but the effort taxed his courage.
"We'll do it," I said. "Don't let the brute beat us."