“Any tusks?” demanded Winthrope.
Miss Leslie looked away. A heap of bones, however cleanly gnawed, is not a pleasant sight. The skull of the animal seemed to be missing; but Blake stumbled upon it in a tuft of grass, and kicked it out upon the open ground. Every shred of hide and gristle had been gnawed from it by the jackals; yet if there had been any doubt as to the creature’s identity, there was evidence to spare in the savage tusks which projected from the jaws.
“Je-rusalem!” observed Blake; “this old boar must have been something of a scrapper his own self.”
“In India they have been known to kill a tiger. Can you knock out the tusks?”
“What for?”
“Well, you said we had nothing for arrow points–”
“Good boy! We’ll cinch them, and ask questions later.”
A few blows with the club loosened the tusks. Blake handed them over to Winthrope, together with the whiskey flask, and led the way to the half-broken path through the thicket. A free use of his club made the path a little more worthy of the name, and as there was less need of haste than on the previous evening, Winthrope and Miss Leslie came through with only a few fresh scratches. Once on open ground again, they soon gained the fallen palms.
At a word from Blake, Miss Leslie hastened to fetch nuts for Winthrope to husk and open. Blake, who had plucked three leaves from a fan palm near the edge of the jungle, began to split long shreds from one of the huge leaves of a cocoanut palm. This gave him a quantity of coarse, stiff fibre, part of which he twisted in a cord and used to tie one of the leaves of the fan palm over his head.
“How’s that for a bonnet?” he demanded.