THE RE-ASCENT OF MAN
Afternoon was far advanced, and Winthrope was beginning to feel anxious,
when at last Blake pushed out from among the close thickets. As he
approached, he swung an unshapely club of green wood, pausing every few
paces to test its weight and balance on a bush or knob of dirt.
"By Jove!" called Winthrope; "that's not half bad! You look as if
you could bowl over an ox."
Blake showed that he was flattered.
"Oh, I don't know," he responded; "the thing's blamed unhandy. Just
the same, I guess we'll be ready for callers to-night."
"How's that?"
"Show you later, Pat, me b'y. Now trot out some nuts. We'll feed
before we move camp."
"Miss Leslie is still sleeping."
"Time, then, to roust her out. Hey, Miss Jenny, turn out! Time to chew."
Miss Leslie sat up and gazed around in bewilderment.
"It's all right, Miss Genevieve," reassured Winthrope. "Blake has
found a safe place for the night, and he wishes us to eat before we leave
here."
"Save lugging the grub," added Blake. "Get busy, Pat."
As Winthrope caught up a nut, the girl began to arrange her disordered
hair and dress with the deft and graceful movements of a woman thoroughly
trained in the art of self-adornment. There was admiration in Blake's
deep eyes as he watched her dainty preening. She was not a beautiful
girl--at present she could hardly be termed pretty; yet even in her
draggled, muddy dress she retained all the subtle charms of culture
which appeal so strongly to a man. Blake was subdued. His feelings even
carried him so far as an attempt at formal politeness, when they had
finished their meal.
"Now, Miss Leslie," he began, "it's little more than half an hour
to sundown; so, if you please, if you're quite ready, we'd best be
starting."
"Is it far?"
"Not so very. But we've got to chase through the jungle. Are you sure
you're quite ready?"
"Quite, thank you. But how about Mr. Winthrope's ankle?"
"He'll ride as far as the trees. I can't squeeze through with him,
though."
"I shall walk all the way," put in Winthrope.
"No, you won't. Climb aboard," replied Blake, and catching up his
club, he stooped for Winthrope to mount his back. As he rose with his
burden, Miss Leslie caught sight of his coat, which still lay in a roll
beside the palm trunk.
"How about your coat, Mr. Blake?" she asked. "Should you not put it
on?"
"No; I'm loaded now. Have to ask you to look after it. You may need
it before morning, anyway. If the dews here are like those in Central
America, they are d-darned liable to bring on malarial fever."
Nothing more was said until they had crossed the open space between the
palms and the belt of jungle along the river. At other times Winthrope
and Miss Leslie might have been interested in the towering screw-palms,
festooned to the top with climbers, and in the huge ferns which they
could see beneath the mangroves, in the swampy ground on their left.
Now, however, they were far too concerned with the question of how
they should penetrate the dense tangle of thorny brush and creepers
which rose before them like a green wall. Even Blake hesitated as he
released Winthrope, and looked at Miss Leslie's costume. Her white
skirt was of stout duck; but the flimsy material of her waist was
ill-suited for rough usage.
"Better put the coat on, unless you want to come out on the other side
in full evening dress," he said. "There's no use kicking; but I wish
you'd happened to have on some sort of a jacket when we got spilled."
"Is there no path through the thicket?" inquired Winthrope.
"Only the hippo trail, and it don't go our way. We've got to run our
own line. Here's a stick for your game ankle."
Winthrope took the half-green branch which Blake broke from the nearest
tree, and turned to assist Miss Leslie with the coat. The garment was
of such coarse cloth that as Winthrope drew the collar close about her
throat Miss Leslie could not forego a little grimace of repugnance. The
crease between Blake's eyes deepened, and the girl hastened to utter
an explanatory exclamation: "Not so tight, Mr. Winthrope, please! It
scratches my neck."
"You'd find those thorns a whole lot worse," muttered Blake.
"To be sure; and Miss Leslie fully appreciates your kindness,"
interposed Winthrope.
"I do indeed, Mr. Blake! I'm sure I never could go through here without
your coat."
"That's all right. Got the handkerchief?"
"I put it in one of the pockets."
"It'll do to tie up your hair."
Miss Leslie took the suggestion, knotting the big square of linen over
her fluffy brown hair.
Blake waited only for her to draw out the kerchief, before he began to
force a way through the jungle. Now and then he beat at the tangled
vegetation with his club. Though he held to the line by which he had
left the thicket, yet all his efforts failed to open an easy passage
for the others. Many of the thorny branches sprang back into place behind
him, and as Miss Leslie, who was the first to follow, sought to thrust
them aside, the thorns pierced her delicate skin, until her hands were
covered with blood. Nor did Winthrope, stumbling and hobbling behind her,
fare any better. Twice he tripped headlong into the brush, scratching
his arms and face.
Blake took his own punishment as a matter of course, though his tougher
and thicker skin made his injuries less painful. He advanced steadily
along the line of bent and broken twigs that marked his outward passage,
until the thicket opened on a strip of grassy ground beneath a wild
fig-tree.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Winthrope, "a banyan!"
"Banyan? Well, if that's British for a daisy, you've hit it,"
responded Blake. "Just take a squint up here. How's that for a roost?"
Winthrope and Miss Leslie stared up dubiously at the edge of a bed of
reeds gathered in the hollow of one of the huge flattened branches at its
junction with the main trunk of the banyan, twenty feet above them.
"Will not the mosquitoes pester us, here among the trees?" objected
Winthrope.
"Storm must have blown 'em away. I haven't seen any yet."
"There will be millions after sunset."
"Maybe; but I bet they keep below our roost"
"But how are we to get up so high?" inquired Miss Leslie.
"I can swarm this drop root, and I've a creeper ready for you two,"
explained Blake.
Suiting action to words, he climbed up the small trunk of the air root,
and swung over into the hollow where he had piled the reeds. Across the
broad limb dangled a rope-like creeper, one end of which he had fastened
to a branch higher up. He flung down the free end to Winthrope.
"Look lively, Pat," he called. "The sun's most gone, and the twilight
don't last all night in these parts. Get the line around Miss Leslie,
and do what you can on a boost."
"I see; but, you know, the vine is too stiff to tie."
Blake stifled an oath, and jerked the end of the creeper up into his
hand. When he threw it down again, it was looped around and fastened in
a bowline knot.
"Now, Miss Leslie, get aboard, and we'll have you up in a jiffy," he
said.
"Are you sure you can lift me?" asked the girl, as Winthrope slipped
the loop over her shoulders.
Blake laughed down at them. "Well, I guess yes! Once hoisted a fellow
out of a fifty-foot prospect hole--big fat Dutchman at that. You don't
weigh over a hundred and twenty."
He had stretched out across the broadest part of the branch. As Miss
Leslie seated herself in the loop, he reached down and began to haul up
on the creeper, hand over hand. Though frightened by the novel manner
of ascent, the girl clung tightly to the line above her head, and Blake
had no difficulty in raising her until she swung directly beneath him.
Here, however, he found himself in a quandary. The girl seemed as
helpless as a child, and he was lying flat. How could he lift her above
the level of the branch?
"Take hold the other line," he said. The girl hesitated. "Do you hear?
Grab it quick, and pull up hard, if you don't want a tumble!"
The girl seized the part of the creeper which was fastened above, and
drew herself up with convulsive energy. Instantly Blake rose to his
knees, and grasping the taut creeper with one hand, reached down with
the other, to swing the girl up beside him on the branch.
"All right, Miss Jenny," he reassured her as he felt her tremble.
"Sorry to scare you, but I couldn't have made it without. Now, if
you'll just hold down my legs, we'll soon hoist his ludship."
He had seated her in the broadest part of the shallow hollow, where the
branch joined the main trunk of the fig. Heaped with the reeds which
he had gathered during the afternoon, it made such a cozy shelter that
she at once forgot her dizziness and fright. Nestling among the reeds,
she leaned over and pressed down on his ankles with all her strength.
The loose end of the creeper had fallen to the ground when Blake lifted
her upon the branch, and Winthrope was already slipping into the loop.
Blake ordered him to take it off, and send up the club. As the creeper
was again flung down, a black shadow swept over the jungle.
"Hello! Sunset!" called Blake. "Look sharp, there!"
"All ready," responded Winthrope.
Blake drew in a full breath, and began to hoist. The position was an
awkward one, and Winthrope weighed thirty or forty pounds more than Miss
Leslie. But as the Englishman came within reach of the descending loop,
he grasped it and did what he could to ease Blake's efforts. A few
moments found him as high above the ground as Blake could raise him.
Without waiting for orders, he swung himself upon the upper part of
the creeper, and climbed the last few feet unaided. Blake grunted with
satisfaction as he pulled him in upon the branch.
"You may do, after all," he said. "At any rate, we're all aboard for
the night; and none too soon. Hear that!"
"What?"
"Lion, I guess--Not that yelping. Listen!"
The brief twilight was already fading into the darkness of a moonless
night, and as the three crouched together in their shallow nest, they
were soon made audibly aware of the savage nature of their surroundings.
With the gathering night the jungle wakened into full life. From all
sides came the harsh squawking of birds, the weird cries of monkeys and
other small creatures, the crash of heavy animals moving through the
jungle, and above all the yelp and howl and roar of beasts of prey.
After some contention with Winthrope, Blake conceded that the roars
of his lion might be nothing worse than the snorting of the hippopotami
as they came out to browse for the night. In this, however, there was
small comfort, since Winthrope presently reasserted his belief in the
climbing ability of leopards, and expressed his opinion that, whether
or not there were lions in the neighborhood, certain of the barking
roars they could hear came from the throats of the spotted climbers. Even
Blake's hair bristled as his imagination pictured one of the great
cats creeping upon them in the darkness from the far end of their nest
limb, or leaping down out of the upper branches.
The nerves of all three were at their highest tension when a dark form
swept past through the air within a yard of their faces. Miss Leslie
uttered a stifled scream, and Blake brandished his club. But Winthrope,
who had caught a glimpse of the creature's shape, broke into a nervous
laugh.
"It's only a fruit bat," he explained. "They feed on the banyan figs,
you know."
In the reaction from this false alarm, both men relaxed, and began
to yield to the effects of the tramp across the mud-flats. Arranging
the reeds as best they could, they stretched out on either side of
Miss Leslie, and fell asleep in the middle of an argument on how the
prospective leopard was most likely to attack.
Miss Leslie remained awake for two or three hours longer. Naturally
she was more nervous than her companions, and she had been refreshed by
her afternoon's nap. Her nervousness was not entirely due to the wild
beasts. Though Blake had taken pains to secure himself and his companions
in loops of the creeper, fastened to the branch above, Winthrope moved
about so restlessly in his sleep that the girl feared he would roll from
the hollow.
At last her limbs became so cramped that she was compelled to change
her position. She leaned back upon her elbow, determined to rise again
and maintain her watch the moment she was rested. But sleep was close
upon her. There was a lull in the louder noises of the jungle. Her eyes
closed, and her head sank lower. In a little time it was lying upon
Winthrope's shoulder, and she was fast asleep.
As Blake had asserted, the mosquitoes had either been blown away by
the cyclone, or did not fly to such a height. None came to trouble the
exhausted sleepers.