“They have gone away,” Jai Singh told him gravely. “We may meet them when we get to the city beyond the snow. They are not likely to follow us now. No doubt they know a quicker way to get to the place where the Golden Scarab is supreme. But I do not know it. We can only go the way I will show.”
The anchor was lifted, and the four oarsmen settled down to their work in the dogged, matter-of-fact manner characteristic of them.
It was the middle of the next day when they reached the headwaters of the branch of the famous Ganges up which the boat had been toiling.
They had not seen anything of their enemies of the day before, and it seemed as if the men who had been with the medicine man were none too eager to avenge his death.
Soon the rest of the journey would have to be done on foot, with the men carrying such supplies as they might need on the way to the home of the Golden Scarab.
Although they had neither seen or heard anything of the men belonging to the medicine man who had given them such a lively tussle when the snake charmer met his death, they had a strange sense of being watched, without being able to explain exactly what the feeling was.
There had been several places where, on account of rapids or shallows in the river, it had been necessary to carry the boat around.
Each time this had happened, they had posted a guard to look out for lurking enemies, but nothing had been seen of the rascals they believed were not far away.
Patsy had expressed his disgust on each occasion because there had been no chance of battle.
But Patsy always had a chip on his shoulder. So Chick only laughed at his pugnacious comrade, while Nick Carter pretended to be wholly oblivious.