Doubtless the pain in my ankle distracted my attention, but at any rate when I had crept a distance which I thought should have been sufficient to place me out of the forest and on the slope, there was no hill visible and the jungle seemed equally deep on every side. Thinking I had probably made a mistake of a point or more, by my mental compass, I started off again, in a slightly different direction.
This soon became hopeless. I realised that the fog had confused me a trifle, but it seemed too absurd that I should not find the clearing and then be able to go to the top of the hill. In fifteen minutes I had become so muddled that I dared not move another yard. It appears ridiculous, but I was lost.
Jungle, I had found before this, was quite sufficiently difficult to traverse toward a given point in the brightest light, but enveloped in a fog it became the most bewildering and maddening maze. To make matters worse, the day was nearly spent, my ankle pained me exceedingly and my dread of snakes became a factor which contributed much to my nervous excitement. I leaned against a tree, finally, convinced of the inexpedience of blundering about in a hit-or-miss effort to rectify my first mistake. If I got any deeper in the tangle, I thought, I might not be able to find myself, even by the full light of day.
To stand there in that inhabited place of horrors, knowing that the sun was departing in its race toward the western horizon, feeling anxious and uncourageous, aching from my foot to my thigh, and angry with myself for being such a fool,—this was about as comfortless a thing as I had ever undergone. I was sure the fog would lift from the hill while it still surrounded me; I was certain the Blacks would swarm up the slope, storm the place, murder half my Links and drive the others pell-mell to the woods; and I was not at all convinced that I should ever issue forth from that jungle alive.
I listened, expectantly, but not a sound could I catch, either of prowling brutes, nor of attack on our village; the silence was particularly oppressive. Darker and darker grew the forest. I knew at last the sun had set on an ocean of fog. Perhaps the attack had been rendered impossible, for that day at least, but wherein my condition was bettered by this descent of night was more than I could discover. My thoughts were hardly more cheerful when I pictured the breaking of dawn, the hill-top clear and distinct in the light, and the blood-hungry enemy sweeping the summit of every vestige of our work and genius.
One hour, two, perhaps three elapsed—a time that seemed a century. I had remained all the while at the foot of that tree, without attempting to move about. I was doomed to remain there, helpless and impotent, it seemed, for any time which might prove agreeable to the gods of fortune. My thoughts had wandered afield, so that doubtless I had forgotten to listen to anything but my own meditation. It is certain that I was conscious for several moments, in an automatic manner, of a dull, monotonous sound, before it reached my notice. At last I seemed abruptly to recognise that a thud and thud was penetrating the silence. Then I started so quickly toward the direction whence this disturbance arose that I all but fell, unsupported as I was by the injured foot. But I pulled myself together and feeling my way, hastened forward as rapidly as possible, crazed with a new delight. I had recognised the sound.
It was Fatty, beating on the drum to affright the Blacks.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE BAMBOO BOMBS
In my haste to reach the clearing before that electrifying tom-tom melody should cease, I took no account of the distance between the edge of the wood and the place where I had halted. It was not so far as I had feared, however, though it was further than I had any business to have been away from home.
Upon coming to the slope, I got upon my hands and knees to crawl, for my ankle required rest. The fires were burning brightly in our village, but the mist was still weaving thickly about the summit.