“Nonsense,” said I. “The rascal, perhaps, is another spy like that chap who led us into the stockade trap! I ain’t going out of the straight road the cap’en laid down for us to steer. He said the column was to go west sou’-west by compass, and west sou’-west, Larry, I’m going!”
So saying, off I bore in the direction I had indicated, keeping to the right of the main column, which was following the bank of the Sabaki River.
Trudging along steadily, Larry just keeping in sight of me, so as to hold touch with the column, I came, a little way farther on, upon a most beautiful grove of camphor and juniper-trees, that seemed cut out of a gorge in the Kilima-Njaro mountains.
The smell was so overpoweringly sweet and delicious, after the toil of our long march and the arid wastes through which we had drearily toiled, knee-deep in hot sand that had burnt the soles of our feet through our boots, that I really could not help halting for a moment to inhale the soft perfumed air, which seemed to me like a breath from the portals of Paradise!
Leaning against one of the trees, a fine juniper it was, I had just taken off my cap to wipe the perspiration that was rolling down my face like rain, it having been a stiff climb upwards from the undulating country below, besides having to battle, too, with the brushwood most of the way, and the creepers that hung down from the branches, making some of the places through which we passed perfect jungles of massed vegetation, when, all of a sudden, a big hairy hand clutched me round the throat and I felt myself drawn up into the tree.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
A Regular Scrimmage!
I believe the delicious perfume that permeated the air had almost lulled me to sleep for the moment, when I was rudely roused up by feeling the grip on my throat. “Belay that, Larry,” cried I, fancying that my practical-joking friend had stolen a march on me, thinking to catch me napping, speaking without even taking the trouble to open my eyes. “A lark’s a lark, old chap: but you needn’t squeeze my throat so beastly hard, Larry!”