“Very well, then: while I count seven. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. This is your last chance, I warn you straight. Are you coming? Very well, then. . . . Seven. I think I may promise you that you’ll regret this, my young friend. You’re within easy shot-gun range, and I’ll walk you up like I’d walk up partridges. I gave you a square deal, but you asked for trouble. Don’t blame me, if you get it.”
At that instant, from somewhere in the forest, perhaps thirty yards from where Hi had entered it, a piece of a dead bough fell to the ground, with a noise which to Hi was exactly that of one slipping on wet earth and recovering. To Letcombe-Bassett it gave a much-desired clue.
“Right,” he called. “Thank you for telling me where you are; now we’ll see. My Indians say you stink. You’ll stink worse before I’ve done with you, my young whelp.”
At this he burst into cover in the direction of the fallen bough; but as the jungle happened to be thick there, he gave it up, went back into the open, cast about for Hi’s marks, and re-entered at the very place where Hi had entered. When once within the scrub, he seemed to neglect tracks and again tried to force a passage to where the bough had fallen. He beat the cover as he went. It was all dry, feathery, fronded cover, sweetly smelling when crushed, but abounding in scarlet midges. Hi heard him slap at his cheeks and curse: he himself felt that he was being eaten alive, yet he could not stir.
“All right,” the man called. “Don’t think I’ve done with you. You’ve not done me yet. Since I know you’re not over here, I know you must be over there; and when I get you, you’ll get the kibosh put on all this poppycock; you wait.”
The man cast back along the fringe of the cover, beating it, as far as Hi could judge, with care. The wood there was all sage-green sari-sari plants, easy to thrust through but confusing to see in, as the fern-like shoots grew thick to the ground. When he had made a cast of about sixty yards, he turned, to make a cast back, a little further into the wood. Hi heard him come nearer.
“The brute,” Hi thought, “he knows something about hunting; he’ll cast to and fro like a shuttle till he lands right on to me. My only chance will be to trip him and try to bag his gun.”
The man came slowly back, searching: Hi heard him kick at the undergrowth, shake aside boughs, slap at the midges, and whistle between his teeth. Sometimes he sang, in a voice no bigger than a hum, the first line of a song:
“There were three flies; three merry, merry flies.”
He would stop here, as though he knew no more of the words, hum through the tune, or whistle it, in a groom’s whistle, between his teeth, and then sing the refrain: “Whack fol lol tiddly ido.” All the time, he was drawing nearer, beating the cover; presently he was at the end of his beat, and turning to beat back a little further into the forest. “I’m sixty or seventy yards into the forest from the clearing,” Hi reckoned. “He has gone roughly through half of that. Now he’s getting really near, and this time he may see me.”