would not own to the doctor that I had my doubts, and he owned
afterwards to me that his feeling was the same. So we both acted as if
we had for certain discovered him of whom we came in search, and waited
our time for the first venture.

It was dangerous work hunting for food at so short a distance from the
village, but our black followers, aided by Jimmy, were very successful,
their black skins protecting them from exciting surprise if they were
seen from a distance, and they brought in a good supply of fish every
day simply by damming up some suitable pool in the little stream in
whose bank our refuge was situated. This stream swarmed with fish, and
it was deep down in a gully between and arched over by trees. The bows
and arrows and Jimmy's spear obtained for us a few birds, and in
addition they could always get for us a fair supply of fruit, though not
quite such as we should have chosen had it been left to us. Roots, too,
they brought, so that with the stores we had there was not much prospect
of our starving.

In fact so satisfactory was our position in the pleasant temperate cave
that Jack Penny was in no hurry to move.

"We're just as well here as anywhere else," he said; "that is, if we had
found your father."

"And got him safe here," he added after a pause.

"And the black chaps didn't come after us," he said after a little more
thought.

"And your mother wasn't anxious about you," he said, after a little more
consideration.

"You'll find such a lot more reasons for not stopping, Jack Penny," I
said, after hearing him out, "that you'll finish by saying we had better
get our work done and return to a civilised country as soon as we can."

"Oh, I don't know!" said Jack slowly. "I don't care about civilised
countries: they don't suit me. Everybody laughs at me because I'm a bit
different, and father gives it to me precious hard sometimes. Give me
Gyp and my gun, and I should be happy enough here."

"Don't talk like that, Jack," I said in agony, as I thought of him who
had helped me to escape, and of the prisoner he had mentioned, and whom
the black professed to have seen. "Let's get our task done and escape
as soon as we can. A savage life is not for such as we."

That day we had an alarm.

Our men had been out and returned soon after sunrise, that being our
custom for safety's sake. Then, too, we were very careful about having
a fire, though we had no difficulty with it, for it burned f