“Ah! but he has, though, the rogue!—only I thought of my rifle and game first.”
“Come, Martin,” said I, “there is one consolation; there seems to have been neither mosquitoes nor white ants about, since we have been here.”
“Bother! but I don’t know that—every here and there I feel as if I had been drilled. When the light comes, perhaps we shall find ourselves as full of small holes as a couple of colanders; but give me your hand—that is, if you can tell where I am, by my voice.”
“All right,” I said; and, for a few minutes, we played a game of blind-man’s-buff, and at length only succeeded in meeting, by both tumbling over the same tree-stump. Then we took hold of each other’s hand, and sat awaiting the first streak of daylight.
“Shouldn’t I like to come across Master Si-Ling? I tell you what, Claud, I could even now forgive the fellow if he would only bring us our clothes; for what a couple of fools we shall look to the first person we meet, and how Prabu and the men will laugh at us, for being so easily gulled!”
“Well, I don’t know: they ought not to laugh at us, for we shall at least look the picture of innocence.”
“Ah! I have it, old fellow—I tell you what we will do.”
“What?”
“We’ll just rig ourselves out with palm-leaves.”
“A very good notion, Martin,” said I; and as soon as it became light enough we gathered some; and, by dint of much perseverance and a little ingenuity—such as using a piece of sharp stone for a knife, the fibers of rattans for strings, and a thin piece of cane for a needle, or rather piercer—we managed to encase our bodies in palm-leaves. Then, each taking one leaf as a head-covering, we set out, barefooted, for the river, which, as the ground we stood upon was very high, we could see at a distance of little more than a quarter of a mile; and the hearty laughs we had at each other’s appearance almost made us forget, if not forgive, the Chinese rogue for the trick he had played us.