Again his anger flamed against the headhunters.
“They may still, by robbing me of my cartridges, be the cause of my death,” he murmured.
But he had the fatalistic philosophy born of his life in the jungle. The cartridges were gone. He could not help it. Perhaps it had been decreed. Who was he, Bomba, to find fault with the laws that governed the world?
For all the rest of that day he hunted feverishly for some trace of Casson. Hardly a foot of ground escaped his eager scrutiny. He searched every thicket, explored every swamp. At times, when he felt it was safe, he raised his voice in the hope that perhaps Casson might hear him. But all his efforts were fruitless. There was no trace or sound of his half-demented protector.
During his search he had gathered some turtle eggs, and these he roasted at night over a fire before the opening of a cave that he had chosen for the night’s shelter.
The food was succulent, the fire comforting, and the cave reasonably safe. Bomba built up the fire so that it should serve through the night to keep off the prowling denizens of the forest, and made his refuge secure by rolling a great stone that no animal could dislodge to the entrance of the cave.
Then he lay down and slept, not opening his tired eyes till the first break of dawn.
All that day and the next Bomba hunted for Cody Casson. He had given himself three days before he would relinquish the quest as hopeless.
Occasionally he came upon traces of the headhunters. But the tracks were cold, and Bomba calculated that they were at least five days old. If the bucks were in that region at all, they were probably lurking in the vicinity of the cabin, where, soon or late, they could count on Bomba’s reappearance.
Toward the evening of the third day Bomba caught sight of something strange lying at the roots of a great tree in one of the most extensive swamps with which the region abounded.