limped painfully as
I helped him across a small cleared patch near the tree.

"I've hurt my leg," he cried, "but I'm going to get to the camp. If I
fall, Verslun, I want you to lend me a hand. Promise to help me, will
you? She--Miss Barbara, you know, old man. She is everything to me. Give
me a hand if I tumble down."

"I promise," I answered, and he wrung my hand as we started off through
the clawing, scratching vines that tripped us up as we tried to fight
our way forward.

If we had thought on the night before that the quarter mile of country
that lay between the camp and the rocky wall was a difficult stretch to
negotiate, we were more than doubly certain of its impenetrable
character now that daylight had come. How we had ever managed to get
through it in the darkness was a mystery that we tried to solve as we
attempted to make our way back. The place was a mad riot of thorny
undergrowth, laced and bound with vines that were as strong as wire
hawsers. The lianas appeared human to us; they lassoed our legs and
flung us sprawling upon our faces whenever we tried to quicken our
speed. Thorns of a strange fishhook variety drove their barbed points
into us, and each yard of the tortuous path that we cut through the
devilish vines was marked by a scrap of our clothing, which the
tormenting thorns seemed to wave aloft as an emblem of victory.

"He'll beat us!" gasped Holman. "I'm all in, Verslun; that fall has
finished me."

"Keep at it!" I said. "We must be near the camp by now."

"We've walked three miles," muttered Holman. "We've lost our way."

"No, we haven't!" I cried. "We've struck a bad patch, but we'll get
there soon."

The youngster clenched his teeth and endeavoured to forget the agony of
his leg, but the effort taxed his courage.

"We'll do it," I said. "Don't let the brute beat us."

"I--I won't!" he stammered. "If it was anything but my leg! Verslun!"

He fell on his face, and I helped him up, but once again he collapsed.
The injured limb made it impossible for him to stand or even crawl.

"You get ahead," he cried hoarsely. "Leave me, Verslun! Leave me here!"

"But I'd never find you again," I protested.

"Yes, you would! I'll crawl out after a few hours' rest. Run to the
camp, and shoot--shoot the devil the moment you put your eyes on him!"

I took a quick glance at the matted walls of the green creepers that
hedged us in on all sides. Holman was in the last stages of exhaustion,
and I re