CHAPTER XXXII
DEATH AS A BROTHER
Despite the ease with which, in theory, he expected to descend to the ground, Grenville was fully ten minutes escaping from the tree.
A number of twigs that he could not have passed without creating a disturbance he cut away with his knife. His ladder was also badly caught and stubbornly refused to be adjusted. One violent rustling of a heavy limb he caused when it finally slipped straight down, with his feet all but striking on the ground.
He remained perfectly silent, ready for immediate retreat, regaining his breath and straining his ears for the slightest sound, for a long, uneventful minute. When he finally drew his sharp brass cleaver from his pocket and started through the thicket, there was not the slightest sound in all the region about him, either of animals or men.
Into one of the numerous wild creatures' trails he found his way with greater ease because of his thorough familiarity with all that end of the island.
The trail, as he knew, led down by the spring, where a branch wound first towards the estuary and then across the bed of the rill, where it cut the path through the axis of the island.
Almost as noiselessly as one of the creatures hunted or hunting in the hours of blackest shadow, he made his way down to the rear of the pool, where he paused as before to listen. The squeal of some little nocturnal beast and the patter of something paddling about in the water convinced him at once the Dyaks were certainly not there, or else were most skillfully hidden.
With a steadily increasing conviction that the boatmen would stick to their craft at night, he felt his boldness strengthen. The importance of discovering the enemy's position was duly impressed on his mind. He felt that once he could gain the principal pathway down the island's length he could follow the edge of a narrow bit of clearing, off to the left of the rotting old barque, and thus arrive above the inlet, where he was certain their vessel was concealed.