"I have heard nothing unusual," he said. "But then I have been
unconscious much of the time."

Had it not been for the man's very evident weakness, Clayton should
have suspected him of having sinister knowledge of the girl's
whereabouts; but he could see that Thuran lacked sufficient vitality
even to descend, unaided, from the shelter. He could not, in his
present physical condition, have harmed the girl, nor could he have
climbed the rude ladder back to the shelter.

Until dark the Englishman searched the nearby jungle for a trace of the
missing one or a sign of the trail of her abductor. But though the
spoor left by the fifty frightful men, unversed in woodcraft as they
were, would have been as plain to the densest denizen of the jungle as
a city street to the Englishman, yet he crossed and recrossed it twenty
times without observing the slightest indication that many men had
passed that way but a few short hours since.

As he searched, Clayton continued to call the girl's name aloud, but
the only result of this was to attract Numa, the lion. Fortunately the
man saw the shadowy form worming its way toward him in time to climb
into the branches of a tree before the beast was close enough to reach
him. This put an end to his search for the balance of the afternoon,
as the lion paced back and forth beneath him until dark.

Even after the beast had left, Clayton dared not descend into the awful
blackness beneath him, and so he spent a terrifying and hideous night
in the tree. The next morning he returned to the beach, relinquishing
the last hope of succoring Jane Porter.

During the week that followed, Monsieur Thuran rapidly regained his
strength, lying in the shelter while Clayton hunted food for both. The
men never spoke except as necessity demanded. Clayton now occupied the
section of the shelter which had been reserved for Jane Porter, and
only saw the Russian when he took food or water to him, or performed
the other kindly offices which common humanity required.

When Thuran was again able to descend in search of food, Clayton was
stricken with fever. For days he lay tossing in delirium and
suffering, but not once did the Russian come near him. Food the
Englishman could not have eaten, but his craving for water amounted
practically to torture. Between the recurrent attacks of delirium,
weak though he was, he managed to reach the brook once a day and fill a
tiny can that had been among the few ap