"We have passed it already, sahib," replied the Burman. "It is solid jungle on both banks now, with no path at all The dacoits cannot follow except along the river itself."
"Then we've dropped 'em," said Jim Dent decisively. "We shall never see 'em again."
And Jim's words proved to be right. They had at last eluded the pursuit of the blood-thirsty little Kachins.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE VILLAGE FESTIVAL.
For three days the strong arms of Me Dain and the two Shan boatmen drove the river boat up the stream, and every day's journey brought them nearer to the mountains where the rubies were found, and among whose recesses they believed that Jack's father was a close prisoner in the hands of men who coveted rubies above all things.
Jack said very little to his companions about the object of their journey, but his own thoughts were full of it at every waking moment. Since he had discovered that U Saw, the Ruby King, had a steam yacht, and that it had returned and gone up river shortly before their own arrival, he had felt no doubt whatever in his own mind as to his father's fate. He knew that the great ruby expert was on that yacht a close captive, and that he had been carried by secret ways, through the jungle and over the hills, to the place where U Saw was all-powerful, and would do his utmost to wrest from Thomas Haydon the knowledge which the latter certainly possessed of a great ruby-mine.
Very good. They, too, would push into the Ruby King's country, and do their utmost to foil his plans and snatch his prisoner from his clutch. Hour after hour Jack thought over the situation, while his eye rested almost carelessly on the lovely scenes of hill-side and jungle, past which their boat was driven.