So they crept on, for ten minutes, without anything happening, and by degrees Sandy felt his courage return. Perhaps, after all, there had only been a single savage; and, again, he may have been as frightened as they were, making off immediately after discharging that lone arrow!
Their hearts still beating faster than was their wont, the boys came to the termination of the line of dense bushes. If they expected to go on from this point they must of necessity change their tactics entirely, and expose themselves to the gaze of any lurker.
"Let's run for it!" suggested Sandy, at a loss for any other plan.
"No, I have another idea," returned his resourceful brother.
"Then let us have it, quick, Bob!" whispered the other, to whom inaction was always more or less irksome.
"You start off as though meaning to escape, dodging this way and that. He will perhaps believe that I was cut down by that hissing arrow. Then, if he shows himself, I can get him, perhaps," Bob ventured.
Sandy fell in with the idea at once, although he realized the danger.
"Give the word, then, Bob, and let me go. Anything is better than this suspense," he said, immediately, starting to get on his feet.
"If you hear me shout, drop flat," the elder brother said, impressively. "That will mean he is trying to shoot at you. And if you hear the report of my gun, seek shelter behind some tree."
The last thing Sandy heard as he gained a half-erect position, and started off on a lope, was the click of Bob's gun-lock as he prepared for business. No doubt the boy's heart was pounding like a hammer as he thus exposed himself to the aim of an enemy; but, nothing daunted, he kept right on, looking to the right and to the left as he scurried along.