Afternoon was far advanced, and Winthrope was beginning to feel anxious, when at last Blake pushed out from among the close thickets. As he approached, he swung an unshapely club of green wood, pausing every few paces to test its weight and balance on a bush or knob of dirt.

“By Jove!” called Winthrope; “that’s not half bad! You look as if you could bowl over an ox.”

Blake showed that he was flattered.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he responded; “the thing’s blamed unhandy. Just the same, I guess we’ll be ready for callers to-night.”

“How’s that?”

“Show you later, Pat, me b’y. Now trot out some nuts. We’ll feed before we move camp.”

“Miss Leslie is still sleeping.”

“Time, then, to roust her out. Hey, Miss Jenny, turn out! Time to chew.”

Miss Leslie sat up and gazed around in bewilderment.“It’s all right, Miss Genevieve,” reassured Winthrope. “Blake has found a safe place for the night, and he wishes us to eat before we leave here.”

“Save lugging the grub,” added Blake. “Get busy, Pat.”

As Winthrope caught up a nut, the girl began to arrange her disordered hair and dress with the deft and graceful movements of a woman thoroughly trained in the art of self-adornment. There was admiration in Blake’s deep eyes as he watched her dainty preening. She was not a beautiful girl–at present she could hardly be termed pretty; yet even in her draggled, muddy dress she retained all the subtle charms of culture which appeal so strongly to a man. Blake was subdued. His feelings even carried him so far as an attempt at formal politeness, when they had finished their meal.

“Now, Miss Leslie,” he began, “it’s little more than half an hour to sundown; so, if you please, if you’re quite ready, we’d best be starting.”

“Is it far?”

“Not so very. But we’ve got to chase through the jungle. Are you sure you’re quite ready?”

“Quite, thank you. But how about Mr. Winthrope’s ankle?”

“He’ll ride as far as the trees. I can’t squeeze through with him, though.”“I shall walk all the way,” put in Winthrope.

“No, you won’t. Climb aboard,” replied Blake, and catching up his club, he stooped for Winthrope to mount his back. As he rose with his burden, Miss Leslie caught sight of his coat, which still lay in a roll beside the palm trunk.

“How about your coat, Mr. Blake?” she asked. “Should you not put it on?”

“No; I’m loaded now. Have to ask you to look after it. You may need it before morning, anyway. If the dews here are like those in Central America, they are d-darned liable to bring on malarial fever.”

Nothing more was said until they had crossed the open space between the palms and the belt of jungle along the river. At other times Winthrope and Miss Leslie might have been interested in the towering screw-palms, festooned to the top with climbers, and in the huge ferns which they could see beneath the mangroves, in the swampy ground on their left. Now, however, they were far too concerned with the question of how they should penetrate the dense tangle of thorny brush and creepers which rose before them like a green wall. Even Blake hesitated as he released Winthrope, and looked at Miss Leslie’s costume. Her white skirt was of stout duck; but the flimsy material of her waist was ill-suited for rough usage.

“Better put the coat on, unless you want to come out on the other side in full evening dress,” he said. “There’s no use kicking; but I wish you’d happened to have on some sort of a jacket when we got spilled.”

“Is there no path through the thicket?” inquired Winthrope.

“Only the hippo trail, and it don’t go our way. We’ve got to run our own line. Here’s a stick for your game ankle.”

Winthrope took the half-green branch which Blake broke from the nearest tree, and turned to assist Miss Leslie with the coat. The garment was of such coarse cloth that as Winthrope drew the collar close about her throat Miss Leslie could not forego a little grimace of repugnance. The crease between Blake’s eyes deepened, and the girl hastened to utter an explanatory exclamation: “Not so tight, Mr. Winthrope, please! It scratches my neck.”

“You’d find those thorns a whole lot worse,” muttered Blake.

“To be sure; and Miss Leslie fully appreciates your kindness,” interposed Winthrope.

“I do indeed, Mr. Blake! I’m sure I never could go through here without your coat.”“That’s all right. Got the handkerchief?”

“I put it in one of the pockets.”

“It’ll do to tie up your hair.”

Miss Leslie took the suggestion, knotting the big square of linen over her fluffy brown hair.

Blake waited only for her to draw out the kerchief, before he began to force a way through the jungle. Now and then he beat at the tangled vegetation with his club. Though he held to the line by which he had left the thicket, yet all his efforts failed to open an easy passage for the others. Many of the thorny branches sprang back into place behind him, and as Miss Leslie, who was the first to follow, sought to thrust them aside, the thorns pierced her delicate skin, until her hands were covered with blood. Nor did Winthrope, stumbling and hobbling behind her, fare any better. Twice he tripped headlong into the brush, scratching his arms and face.

Blake took his own punishment as a matter of course, though his tougher and thicker skin made his injuries less painful. He advanced steadily along the line of bent and broken twigs that marked his outward passage, until the thicket opened on a strip of grassy ground beneath a wild fig-tree.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Winthrope, “a banyan!”“Banyan? Well, if that’s British for a daisy, you’ve hit it,” responded Blake. “Just take a squint up here. How’s that for a roost?”

Winthrope and Miss Leslie stared up dubiously at the edge of a bed of reeds gathered in the hollow of one of the huge flattened branches at its junction with the main trunk of the banyan, twenty feet above them.

“Will not the mosquitoes pester us, here among the trees?” objected Winthrope.

“Storm must have blown ’em away. I haven’t seen any yet.”

“There will be millions after sunset.”

“Maybe; but I bet they keep below our roost”

“But how are we to get up so high?” inquired Miss Leslie.

“I can swarm this drop root, and I’ve a creeper ready for you two,” explained Blake.

Suiting action to words, he climbed up the small trunk of the air root, and swung over into the hollow where he had piled the reeds. Across the broad limb dangled a rope-like creeper, one end of which he had fastened to a branch higher up. He flung down the free end to Winthrope.

“Look lively, Pat,” he called. “The sun’s most gone, and the twilight don’t last all night in these parts. Get the line around Miss Leslie, and do what you can on a boost.”“I see; but, you know, the vine is too stiff to tie.”

Blake stifled an oath, and jerked the end of the creeper up into his hand. When he threw it down again, it was looped around and fastened in a bowline knot.

“Now, Miss Leslie, get aboard, and we’ll have you up in a jiffy,” he said.

“Are you sure you can lift me?” asked the girl, as Winthrope slipped the loop over her shoulders.

Blake laughed down at them. “Well, I guess yes! Once hoisted a fellow out of a fifty-foot prospect hole–big fat Dutchman at that. You don’t weigh over a hundred and twenty.”

He had stretched out across the broadest part of the branch. As Miss Leslie seated herself in the loop, he reached down and began to haul up on the creeper, hand over hand. Though frightened by the novel manner of ascent, the girl clung tightly to the line above her head, and Blake had no difficulty in raising her until she swung directly beneath him. Here, however, he found himself in a quandary. The girl seemed as helpless as a child, and he was lying flat. How could he lift her above the level of the branch?

“Take hold the other line,” he said. The girl hesitated. “Do you hear? Grab it quick, and pull up hard, if you don’t want a tumble!”The girl seized the part of the creeper which was fastened above, and drew herself up with convulsive energy. Instantly Blake rose to his knees, and grasping the taut creeper with one hand, reached down with the other, to swing the girl up beside him on the branch.

“All right, Miss Jenny,” he reassured her as he felt her tremble. “Sorry to scare you, but I couldn’t have made it without. Now, if you’ll just hold down my legs, we’ll soon hoist his ludship.”

He had seated her in the broadest part of the shallow hollow, where the branch joined the main trunk of the fig. Heaped with the reeds which he had gathered during the afternoon, it made such a cozy shelter that she at once forgot her dizziness and fright. Nestling among the reeds, she leaned over and pressed down on his ankles with all her strength.

The loose end of the creeper had fallen to the ground when Blake lifted her upon the branch, and Winthrope was already slipping into the loop. Blake ordered him to take it off, and send up the club. As the creeper was again flung down, a black shadow swept over the jungle.

“Hello! Sunset!” called Blake. “Look sharp, there!”

“All ready,” responded Winthrope.Blake drew in a full breath, and began to hoist. The position was an awkward one, and Winthrope weighed thirty or forty pounds more than Miss Leslie. But as the Englishman came within reach of the descending loop, he grasped it and did what he could to ease Blake’s efforts. A few moments found him as high above the ground as Blake could raise him. Without waiting for orders, he swung himself upon the upper part of the creeper, and climbed the last few feet unaided. Blake grunted with satisfaction as he pulled him in upon the branch.

“You may do, after all,” he said. “At any rate, we’re all aboard for the night; and none too soon. Hear that!”

“What?”

“Lion, I guess–Not that yelping. Listen!”

The brief twilight was already fading into the darkness of a moonless night, and as the three crouched together in their shallow nest, they were soon made audibly aware of the savage nature of their surroundings. With the gathering night the jungle wakened into full life. From all sides came the harsh squawking of birds, the weird cries of monkeys and other small creatures, the crash of heavy animals moving through the jungle, and above all the yelp and howl and roar of beasts of prey.After some contention with Winthrope, Blake conceded that the roars of his lion might be nothing worse than the snorting of the hippopotami as they came out to browse for the night. In this, however, there was small comfort, since Winthrope presently reasserted his belief in the climbing ability of leopards, and expressed his opinion that, whether or not there were lions in the neighborhood, certain of the barking roars they could hear came from the throats of the spotted climbers. Even Blake’s hair bristled as his imagination pictured one of the great cats creeping upon them in the darkness from the far end of their nest limb, or leaping down out of the upper branches.

The nerves of all three were at their highest tension when a dark form swept past through the air within a yard of their faces. Miss Leslie uttered a stifled scream, and Blake brandished his club. But Winthrope, who had caught a glimpse of the creature’s shape, broke into a nervous laugh.

“It’s only a fruit bat,” he explained. “They feed on the banyan figs, you know.”

In the reaction from this false alarm, both men relaxed, and began to yield to the effects of the tramp across the mud-flats. Arranging the reeds as best they could, they stretched out on either side of Miss Leslie, and fell asleep in the middle of an argument on how the prospective leopard was most likely to attack.

Miss Leslie remained awake for two or three hours longer. Naturally she was more nervous than her companions, and she had been refreshed by her afternoon’s nap. Her nervousness was not entirely due to the wild beasts. Though Blake had taken pains to secure himself and his companions in loops of the creeper, fastened to the branch above, Winthrope moved about so restlessly in his sleep that the girl feared he would roll from the hollow.

At last her limbs became so cramped that she was compelled to change her position. She leaned back upon her elbow, determined to rise again and maintain her watch the moment she was rested. But sleep was close upon her. There was a lull in the louder noises of the jungle. Her eyes closed, and her head sank lower. In a little time it was lying upon Winthrope’s shoulder, and she was fast asleep.

As Blake had asserted, the mosquitoes had either been blown away by the cyclone, or did not fly to such a height. None came to trouble the exhausted sleepers.