mplaint.

* * * * *

After perhaps an hour of this unbearable effort, when both felt as
though the sun had sucked them dry of perspiration, they encountered
a rough footpath leading into the jungle. The path suggested human
habitation somewhere near. The inhabitants might be hostile natives,
even cannibals perhaps, but in this unknown land they would have to
take a chance on that.

With a sigh of relief, and refusing to look ahead too far, or try to
guess what lay in wait for them in the black mystery of the jungle,
they turned into the footpath. The jungle was fetid and sweaty, but
even this was a relief from the intolerable sun which could not reach
them here because the jungle had closed its leafy arms over the trail
instantly. One could not tell from the path whether it had been made
by natives or by whites, for it was packed hard. It led straight away
from the shoreline.

"We'll have to keep a sharp lookout for possible poisoned spring
darts, Ellen," said Bentley.

"I'm not afraid, Lee," she answered stoutly. "Fate wouldn't allow us
to come through what we have only to end things with poisoned darts.
It just couldn't happen that way!"

Thus simply they addressed each other. It seemed as though years had
been squeezed into a matter of hours. They knew each other as well as
they would, in other circumstances, have known each other after a year
of constant association. Here barriers of conventions were razed as
simply and naturally as among children.

* * * * *

They had pressed well into the gloom of the jungle when the first
sound came.

Not the laughter they had heard before, but the drumming. It was ahead
and somewhat to the left, and as they stopped without speaking they
could distinctly hear the threshing of a huge body through the
underbrush. The sound seemed to be approaching and for a minute or so
they listened. Then the sound was repeated off to the right, a trifle
further away.

"Can you climb, Ellen?" asked Bentley simply. "This section is filled
with anthropoid apes, according to the second officer of the _Bengal
Queen_. We may have to take to the trees."

"I can climb," she said, "but from what I've studied of the habits of
these brutes they do a great deal of bluffing before they actually
charge, and may not molest us at all if we pay no attention."

Bentley felt almost nude because he had no weapons save his own fists.
And h