They traveled all day without meeting with any unusual adventure, pausing only briefly at noon to roast some jaboty eggs they found in the forest that gave a welcome variation to their meat diet.
The shadows were beginning to gather when they came at last to the spot where the paths of the slaves and the two parties of headhunters had crossed.
The trail of the Indians was cold, but it was not difficult for one so versed in woodcraft as Bomba to pick it up. There was still a little daylight remaining, and he persisted in utilizing every moment of it to gain another mile or two before he called a halt for the night.
On and on they went, although by this time they were nearly stumbling with fatigue. They were penetrating a part of the jungle that was new to Bomba. Pools, swelled by the recent rain, were frequent, some of them so deep that it was necessary to cross them by notched trunks of trees, the crude bridges of the jungle.
Crossing one of these, Ashati, wearied almost to fainting, stumbled and would have fallen had not Bomba seized him and dragged him to the safety of the further bank.
They had gone but a few yards farther, Bomba’s eyes straining to detect the faintly marked trail, when there was a thud, and on the ground before them, directly in their path, appeared a figure so grotesque in form and ugly in face that Bomba took a startled step backward and the two slaves fell to the ground in a fit of shuddering terror.
“The mad monkey!” chattered Neram, and then, as the creature advanced on them, uttered an ear-piercing shriek.
Gibbering and mouthing ferociously, froth slavering from its jaws, the huge ape sprang toward Bomba and the cowering slaves.
Bomba was paralyzed at first by the hideous appearance of the beast and infected to some degree with the superstitious terror that animated Ashati and Neram. He seemed bereft of the power of movement.
Then gathering together his forces, he sprang backward swiftly and fitted an arrow to his bow.