On we ran in the full blaze of the moonlight, bathed in perspiration, now floundering among wild gourds and creeping plants, where little snakes started up to hiss at us; anon over waste tracts, where lilies and geraniums covered all the wilderness; then among long and serrated grass, which cut our shins like saws and sabre-blades. Next we tore a passage through dense masses of wild canes, then through fields of maize, or rice, or millet, and often through cattle kraals, till we reached a wood, where, after taking the precaution of running in one direction in the full light of the moon, we turned and, hare-like, doubled in the other.
By this manoeuvre, I believe, we baffled our fair pursuers, as we saw no more of them for the remainder of that night or the following morning, during the long hours of which we lay close to the earth, buried and hidden under a cool and shady mass of leaves and jungle.
And there, without water to quench our thirst, and without other food than a few wild berries that grew within arm's length of our lurking place, we lay concealed during the whole of the next day.
When night fell, Hartly climbed into a chestnut-tree, and after looking carefully around him, uttered an exclamation of delight.
"I see the way we must steer, Jack," he added.
"You can see the ocean?"
"Ay, or a large river, rippling in the moonlight to the horizon far away."
A sigh of joy escaped me.
"And so, Jack, if our company is necessary to complete the happiness of King Zabadie in the next world, I am sorry for him, as he is likely to take his long voyage without us."
The chestnut was lofty, and from it Hartly could see on one hand the distant hills which form the termination of that mighty chain, the mountains of Kong, and end at the river Formosa. On the other hand, beyond the flat and open country, he could see the great river itself, flowing towards the Bight of Benin, along whose shores and by whose waters lay all our ultimate hope of escape.