"Blyme-me if I don't fetch ye a roasted chicken," said Andy Hawkins, punctuating his speech with a violent jerking of his shoulders. "I can roast it right under the boss' nose, an' 'ee won't see it. Oh, Hi'm slick, Hi am."
And then, astonishing thing! He began to distribute among us, things that he had conjured out of our pockets; some rifle cartridges to Norris, a knife to Marat, my flash-lamp. And then another curious thing happened. The monkey, witnessing this distribution, scrambled down to the Long Tom, plunged in his fist, and handed up to me—who chanced to be nearest—a little gold nugget, the size of a bean. He looked up, watching me while I tied the little lump of gold in a corner of my handkerchief and tucked it into my pocket. He let me take his hand by way of thanking him, and took kindly to the fondling bestowed on him; climbing to my shoulder, looking into my face, and chirping some kind of monkey talk.
We finally tore Norris away from his explorations in the diggings, which he declared still held unlimited store of gold, and we got back to our new camp site. Carlos and I forded the creek, to go to seek out Ray and Robert. And we found them at the edge of the clearing wherein stood those structures.
They were just on the point of moving over to the path that went down to the lower western end of this sunken vale. For they said that Duran had just gone that way, carrying a pack on his back, having come out of the thick wood at the rear of the huts.
"Well," I suggested, "if you, Ray, will go with Carlos and have an eye on Duran, Bob and I can slip over into that brush and see if we can find the place where he gets his goods."
We found the way easy going in the woods for a piece; but when we neared the cliffs of this south wall of the vale, the undergrowth impeded us. With much going about, we finally won in to the cliffs; and after moving some way to the east, we came upon the mouth of a cavern.
"There!" said Robert. "How about that?"
But Hawkins had been all through that, as he had assured us, and we must seek elsewhere.
We finally concluded that we had better have taken the way in the other direction, along the cliff foot, and so we retraced our steps. The farther to the west that we went, the more dense the tropic growth. The damp heat here, too, was stifling, and our progress was most slow. We had struggled on, keeping close to the high, sheer, rocky wall for half an hour, almost, and finding nothing to our present interest, when a cautious whistle brought us to a stand. We moved out toward the sound and joined Ray, who informed us that Duran was on his way back.
"There's no telling where he'll come through here," I said. "Let us get back across the clearing."