Dwight arranged a lory call for Sadok, in case either of them should need the other, and they separated, each vanishing into the lower jungle.
Dwight walked along, searching the jungle growth with keen eyes. Gradually his course led him around the flank to the south and into a deep ravine, with great trees dropping down the slopes below him into the depths. It was impossible to see far, in here, so he climbed up a small tree and looked out. The ravine led up the mountain side, with all the jungle spread out like a map on its flanks. Searching carefully each giant trunk, he at length spied one overgrown with a profusion of some vine that looked promising, and, marking it, he set out. In ten minutes he was close enough to the vine to examine it more carefully. The reddish bark, the five-fingered leaf, looked as if it might be one of that famous family of strychnine trees that extends all around the tropics, from India through the archipelago, to South America and across Africa. Dwight thrilled with a primal, almost superstitious fear as he looked at this sinister representative of its race. It was more deadly than a cobra, if it could bite you! All the stories he had ever heard of the poisonous air that surrounds the strychnine trees came to him; and that fabled Valley of Death in Java, grown thick with upas trees in which nothing can live, came to mind. He kept his distance from the dreaded vine, respectfully, and was about to try to reach Sadok with a call, when voices coming through the jungle arrested him. He sank into the undergrowth and watched through its green depths.
The voices came nearer, guttural tones that set him shivering with excitement. They were coming down the ravine on his side and would pass quite near him, he judged. He drew his automatic and waited.
Then three diminutive black-bearded warriors came into view, passing down what must have been a trail through the jungle, although he had not noticed any in crossing. They passed silently through the green glade, and then two more came into view. Before them they drove a prisoner, a tall Papuan.
Dwight gasped as he looked to make sure—it was Baderoon—captured by the pygmies!
All the generous instincts of youth rose up in him at the sight, and without thinking further he raised his pistol and fired at the nearest pygmy. With grunts of surprise they all bolted into the forest, while Baderoon leaped into the jungle and came running toward him, his arms bound behind his back. Dwight raised his helmet out of the underbrush an instant so Baderoon could find him, and then sank out of sight. An arrow came singing and tanging through the twigs, and then Baderoon stumbled into his lair and fell at his feet.
“Orang-kichil! Cut!” he gasped, turning over on his face. Dwight drew his hunting knife and severed the fibers that bound him. Baderoon wriggled over, his face alight with its happy, care-free Papuan smile. Then came the grim lines of pain as he bore stoically the throes of returning circulation in his arms. Dwight kept up a cautious vigil, expecting momentarily an arrow from some unseen source in the jungle. And the presence of the deadly upas vine behind him did not leave any illusions as to how that arrow would be armed!
Still the stealthy silence! It was his first taste of real jungle fighting, and the boy would gladly have exchanged it for any amount of odds in the open, where one could see and think. Not a bush moved, not a stick cracked; the pygmies might have utterly vanished from the earth, for any sign that the jungle gave to the contrary.
Then came the call of the Papuan lory, twice repeated. It was not far off, and it roused Dwight to a frenzy of hard thinking. The curator and Nicky, with perhaps Sadok, also, were coming, having heard his pistol shot. They must be warned at any hazards. To move from his place of concealment was death. He cudgeled his brains for an answer, turning over one plan after another rapidly and rejecting them all.
Three of anything means “Danger!” in the wilderness, all over the world; such a signal they would at once comprehend, and act accordingly. Three pistol shots would give his location away by their smoke. Dwight raised his voice and gave the lory call three times in answer.