But he was not. Almost before she could realize it, he had reached a spot near the bottom, where by a daring leap, he reached the top of a tree.
“We—we’ve lost him,” she half sobbed. “We’ll never see him again.”
“Listen,” said Nieta with a sudden start.
They did listen and to their waiting ears came the dull roll of distant thunder. In their wild chase they had completely forgotten that the time for the day’s thunderstorm was at hand.
“Where are we?” Johnny asked.
Where indeed? The trail was far above them. Should they attempt to find it they must surely be half drowned before they reached it. A Haitian thunderstorm in the jungle is a fearful thing to contemplate.
“We’d better skirt the top of this cliff and make our way down to the sea,” said Doris. “There must be some thatched huts down there that will furnish shelter.”
Acting upon this plan, they dashed away.
The race after the monkey was nothing to this mad race with the storm. Now creeping along a rocky ledge, now clinging to a stout vine and dropping down, down, down, now racing over a wild hog’s trail, now leaping a fallen tree to tear through a clump of brambles with the rumble and roar of the storm ever increasing they made their way forward, until, with a sudden breathless whoop, Johnny stopped at the edge of a wild cocoanut jungle to stare at the silent, blue-black sea.
“Not a hut,” Doris moaned as her eyes swept the narrow coral beach.