spoken a word for
two nights and a day; it was scarcely wonderful speech was
difficult.

There was no answer for a full minute, and then came that same
groaning cry again, not as in answer to the question, but at its
own regular interval.

Following the curve of the thicket a little way, behind a thick
group of trees Eustace came to a sudden standstill with a cry of
dismay; for there, standing almost upright in the thickest of the
scrub, was the figure of a man, his bare head bowed down upon his
breast so that his face was invisible, his arms hanging down at his
sides.

It struck Eustace at once as strange that he should be standing
making this terrible sound. It would not have surprised the boy
nearly so much to have found him lying down--indeed, that he had
expected. Bracing himself to the task, Eustace went closer.

"I say," he said in a loud voice, "what's up?"

The man made neither sign nor movement. Could he be tied there to a
stake? the boy wondered. Was he deaf and blind?

"I say," Eustace said, almost shouting now, "can't you see me?"

Fighting down his own horror of the situation, he pressed a little
closer, to find the man's shirt torn to shreds, his arms pinioned
down to his sides by something that looked like small cords.

"It's the 'wait-a-bit' cane!" Eustace exclaimed aloud, shrinking
back sharply with a quick horror of being entrapped by it himself.

Here was an awful state of affairs. A wretched wayfarer caught and
held like a fly in a spider's web, and not a soul at hand to help.

To go back to the natives was out of the question. With their
reputation for cruelty and hatred of white men it would be worse
than useless to appeal to them. What was to be done? What would Bob
have done under the circumstances?

With a gasping cry Eustace crept closer again, and bending low he
strained to catch a glimpse of the man's face without going too
perilously deep into the thicket.

"Bob," whispered the boy, "Bob, is it you? Oh, speak to me--is it
you?"

Little fool that he had been not to think of it before. But somehow
these last hours of terror, centred only upon himself and his own
means of escape, had blunted his intelligence to everything
else--even to the remembrance of Bob. He was mad with himself for
it now--so mad that all thought of personal danger fell away from
him. He had room for nothing but the realization that this must be
Bob indeed standing here helpless and dying of privation.