She nodded, and hastened to prepare breakfast, while he packed a skin bag with food, and examined the slender tips of his arrows. As a matter of precaution, he had been keeping them in the cigarette case, where the points would be certain of a coat of the sticky poison and at the same time guarded against inflicting a chance wound. But as he was now about to set out on a journey, he fitted tips into the heads of his two straightest shafts.
The morning was still fresh when they closed the barricade behind them and descended to the pool. There was no game in sight, but Blake had no wish to hunt at the commencement of the trip. The steady southwest wind had blown the sky clear of its malarial haze, and gave promise of a day which should know nothing of sultry calm–a day on which game would be hard to stalk, but one perfectly suited for a long tramp.
Mindful of ticks, Blake headed obliquely across to the beach. Once on the smooth, hard sand, they swung along at a brisk pace, light-hearted and keen with the spirit of adventure. Never had they felt more companionable. Miss Leslie laughed and chatted and sang snatches of songs, while Blake beat time with his club, or sought to whistle grand opera–he had healed his blistered lips some time before by liberal applications of antelope tallow.
Gulls and terns circled about them, or hovered over the water, ready to swoop down upon their finny prey. Sandpipers ran along the beach within a stone’s throw, but the curlews showed their greater knowledge of mankind by keeping beyond gunshot.
Once a great flock of geese drove high overhead, their leader honking the alarm as they swept above the suspicious figures on the beach. Like the curlews, they had knowledge of mankind. But the flock of white pelicans which came sailing along in stately leisure on their immense wings floated past so low that Blake felt certain he could shoot one. He raised his bow and took aim, but refrained from shooting, at the thought that it might be a sheer waste of his precious poison.
A little later a herd of large animals appeared on the border of the grass jungle, but wheeled and dashed back into cover so quickly that Blake barely had time to make out that they were buffaloes–the first he had seen on this coast, but easily recognized by their resemblance to the Cape variety. Their flight gave him small concern; for the time being he was more interested in topography than game.
The southern headland now lay close before them, its seaward face rearing up sheer and lofty, but the approach behind running down in broken terraces. Mid-morning found the explorers at the foot of the ridge. Blake squinted up at the boulder-strewn slopes and the crannies of the broken ledges.
“Likely place for snakes, Miss Jenny,” he remarked. “Guess I’d better lead.”
Eager as she was to look over into the country beyond, the girl dropped into second place, and made no complaint about the wary slowness of her companion’s advance. She found the most difficult parts of the ascent quite easy after her training on the tree-ladder. Blake could have taken ledges and all at a run, but as he mounted each terrace, he halted to spy out the ground before him. Like Miss Leslie, he was looking for snakes, though for an exactly opposite reason. He wished to add to the contents of the cigarette case.
Greatly to his disappointment and the girl’s relief, neither snake nor sign of snake was to be seen all the way up the ridge. As they neared the crest Blake turned to offer her his hand up the last ledges, and in the instant they gained the top.