Yes, he could hear the men shouting and beating the bush.
“There must be a hundred of them,” he murmured. “And dogs! Trapped here by dogs!”
He turned and fairly flew down the trail.
On and on and on, not knowing where, but ever on until at last with hands and face bleeding and clothes in rags, he fell flat in the trail and lay there motionless.
CHAPTER VI
LOST IN THE JUNGLE
Could Johnny have witnessed the dismay and confusion caused by his sudden escape he would have felt far less concerned over his present plight. The first eager pursuers crashed wildly about in the jungle, rushing forward at every sound only to discover that it was made by another hunter instead of the hunted. Their shouts brought other men pouring from the huts and a half score of dogs, who jumped about and added to the din with their senseless yelping.
Daego shouted directions, but his shouts were either unheard or not clearly understood. Then he made an attempt to set the dogs on Johnny’s trail. There were dogs a-plenty to overtake Johnny and slay him but for one thing—dogs are never eager to enter a tropical jungle.
Unaccompanied by his master, the native dog seldom goes far into that tangled mass of vegetation. There are reasons enough for this. Poisonous snakes, ten feet long, lurk in the decay at the base of great trees. Jaguars, prepared to pounce upon a dog, lie flat along great branches, and the uncouth “mountain cow” (tapir) is all too ready to tear him to pieces with her sharp hoofs.
So, though urged on by their enraged masters, the dogs did not venture far and soon enough came crawling back, their defeat registered by drooping tails.
So Johnny Thompson was safe. And yet, was he safe? As the dull agony of exhaustion left him, he began, in a slow, numb sort of way, to remember where he was. He was in a tropical jungle. It was early dusk and the coming night would be made hideous by the barking of alligators, the scream of wild parrots and the hoarse call of jaguars. To move down the trail after darkness would be dangerous. Curled on that trail might be a great snake whose fangs offered sure death. Further movement might call a jaguar to leap upon him from the tree tops.