“Oh, I ought to go on,” Hi said. “I ought to go on. Yet what is the sense of going on, blind as I am, when I don’t know where to make for? See here, Chug-chug,” he said, with signs to represent the white man, “when will the Señor, the chief, come back into the camp?” Chug-chug knew that an important question was asked, but he could not understand it; he made a speech about the new cassava patch, which Hi could not understand. Having thus made the honours even he disappeared.
“I’ll wait till mid-day,” Hi thought. “The white man will be back at mid-day. Father always said that the forest practice is to eat at mid-day and then take siesta. After siesta, I shall be able to go on. The man’s a regular rossy tick: yet even a rossy tick will tell a fellow the way. And the more I think of it, the more sure I am that I shall be able to reach the San Jacinto River from here. I may even reach Don Manuel to-night.”
He stood at the hut door for a few minutes gazing at the scene of primitive life before him. The sun, blazing down into the compound, put new life into him: he felt both warmed and comforted. He was beginning to see a little better out of both eyes, and found that he could now bend his fingers. One of the best of his symptoms was the feeling that if he were to lie down he would sleep.
He went into the hut, with a sudden curious sensation that somebody had been in the hut, behind him, until the instant of his turning to come in. “Strange,” he thought. “It is this puffiness of my eyes. Or I know what it was, coming into the gloom out of the glare, made me think that the posts were a man.” He turned back to make sure of this. “I suppose that that is what it must have been,” he thought. “It did look rather like a man.”
He sat in his hammock, trying to think how much he was to blame for going astray. Then his thoughts turned to the Englishman. “What is he and what is he doing here, and why is he so sour? He must be a prospector of sorts: he is not an engineer, for he hasn’t any engine. He won’t be only a hunter or explorer: he’s too much of a swine for that. I wouldn’t mind betting that he is a gold or mineral prospector, who has come on a good thing out here and is afraid of some other person cutting in on him. That is it, I’ll bet any money. That would explain his being so crusty and giving me so poor a welcome. I wonder what the man is. I suppose that those are his trunks, over there against the wall.”
The trunks were the usual, small, flat, tin, traveller’s trunks, made low, so as to fit under bunks at sea, or lie snugly along the side of a mule. They had once been japanned black. Hard service had worn away much of the japan: some of the tin shewed bright, the rest was battered and discoloured. On the top of the lid of one of them was the letter D in what had once been white paint: on the top of the lid of the other was most of the letter W. Both trunks had been neglected for some time. Sprays of creepers, which had thrust under the roof there, had grown right over them. “D and W,” Hi repeated. “A letter has been blotted out on both boxes. I suppose the man’s name is D . . . W . . . Dirty White, or Dingy Welcome, or Doubtful Wanderer: the initials might stand for any of them. They look like the sort of box a prospector would take. Meanwhile, I should be the better for some sleep.”
He turned into his hammock, hoping that a rest would help to heal his eyes; he saw the dog at the hut door nuzzle further into his flank; then his overwhelming weariness pressed down upon him so that he slept unheeding.
He woke some hours later with the feeling that someone was in the hut wanting to speak to him. It was not easy to thrust aside such folds of sleep; while he struggled with them, the someone, whoever he was, had gone; there was no one there when he awoke. “Strange,” he said. “It seemed as though someone were there. I thought that I saw someone, a tallish chap, who had something to say. I suppose I dreamed it. I wish that sleeping in this land didn’t give one this thick sort of brown taste in the mouth whenever one wakes.”
He turned out to stretch, feeling stunned and stupid, but the better for his rest. “I’ll see if the D. W. fellow has come back,” he thought.
He found that the village was taking the siesta; he had slept into the afternoon; the village was more silent than it had been at any hour of the night. He called at the door of the white man’s hut. “Are you there, sir? May I speak with you?” As he had no answer, he peeped in; the white man had not returned. “Still away,” Hi thought. “What a nuisance.”