“How is your head?” Gil asked, when they had walked a short distance in silence.
“It doesn’t feel particularly comfortable; but I reckon it’ll be all right after a while.”
“If we could bathe it, you would look better. That bloody handkerchief and the matted hair gives you the appearance of a veritable pirate.”
“I don’t feel like one, at all events,” Mr. Jenkins replied, with a laugh. “Just now I’m more of a cannibal than anything else, for it seems as if I could eat a donkey and then look over my shoulder for the rider.”
“Do you suppose they intend to starve us?”
“That’s a hard question to answer. It isn’t likely they’ll take any too good care of us, and we stand a chance of going hungry for some time to come.”
“Such a thing wouldn’t trouble me, providing I could see a way out of this scrape,” Nelse said, with a long-drawn sigh. “If the yacht can’t come to an anchor while the wind is so strong, we needn’t expect help to-day.”
“There’ll be a change in the weather when the sun sets,” the mate replied, encouragingly; but at the same time he did not believe his own statement.
The very old negro was evidently the chief of the party, and he led them through a narrow path, cut amid the dense tangle of foliage, until they arrived at the very spot where the prisoners had witnessed the dance around the pot while hidden among the trees.
Here they were met by the two aged and highly-decorated blacks, who had acted as masters of the ceremony on the previous evening.