“Perhaps they’ll think that we were slaughtered by that drunken tribe,” thought Trim, but he immediately reflected that this could not be, for by this time the Narugas and their white leaders could have been informed as to the escape of the travelers at that point.
“Anyhow,” thought Trim, as he looked at the men through his glass, “there are three whites in that gang[Pg 24] down there which proves that I was not much mistaken in my theory as to what they would do.
“There aren’t more than a dozen blacks with them. It’s too good a chance to lose. I must get our net out and make an effort to snare that entire party.”
Trim hurried along the edge of the cliff until he found a place where the donkeys could descend. Then he went back to the edge of the falls and told his men what he had seen and what he wished to do.
They were perfectly willing and ready to make the attempt with him. Working as rapidly as possible they got the donkeys and all the baggage of the expedition down to the bottom of the cliff, where they found it necessary to proceed along its base toward the waterfall because the ground was too steep and the forest too thick to proceed further just there.
Trim had seen that from the bottom of the falls the ground sloped gently.
“We don’t want the donkeys with us,” he said to the men, “and we might as well leave them here.”
There was a great hollow in the cliff back of the falls.
This is often the case in waterfalls, and Trim was not surprised to find that he could make his way in there without difficulty.
It took some coaxing to get the donkeys to go in, for they were apparently frightened at the roar of the falling water. Once inside, however, they were quiet enough and Trim left them tied to the rough edges of rocks so that they might not slip away and fall into the stream.