Part 31 (1/2)

CHAPTER x.x.xV--A Brother

Leaving the body of the wretched man where they found it, they continued to search among the trees; but nowhere could they discover any trace of the elder guide.

”His body cannot be far away,” said Harry. ”They fell together.”

It was then that, at the sound of a faint cry from somewhere far above them, all three looked up. And the sight they beheld was appalling.

Hundreds of feet above the place where they stood, sheltered by a cranny in the face of the cliff, there grew a gnarled and twisted shrub, a kind of withered tree. In the midst of this, caught like a fish in a net, was a man who, even as they watched him, moved, twisting like a thing in pain.

Cortes scanned the face of the cliff; but, look where he might, he could discover no way by which it was possible to ascend to the place where his brother was suspended in mid-air.

Running back several yards, he regarded the precipice above the withered tree. It was equally inaccessible from above. Then he raised his hands to his mouth and cried out in a loud voice, calling upon his brother by name.

The answer came in a voice so weak that Cortes had to hold a hand to an ear in order to catch the words.

”I am in pain. My arm is broken. Can you not come to my a.s.sistance?”

The younger brother looked about him in despair.

”Can nothing be done?” asked Harry.

”Let me think,” said Cortes, and lifted a hand to his eyes. On a sudden he cried out to his brother. ”Can you hold out for two days?” he asked.

”For two days!” came the answer. ”It is too long.”

”You must!” cried the other. ”Take the belt from your waist and bind yourself to the tree. Then, when your strength is gone, you will not fall.”

Whilst the elder man obeyed these injunctions, Harry turned to Cortes.

”What do you intend to do?” he asked.

”We have no rope,” said the guide. ”Fernando is at least fifty feet from the path above, and there is no rope fifty feet in length nearer to this place than Kano or Sokoto. However, there is--as you know--a rope-like creeper that grows in the bush. I intend to go back as far as the jungle.”

”Can you get there in time?” asked Braid, incredulously.

”My wound is now healed,” said the man, ”my strength returned. I can but do my best.”

Cortes looked up again at his brother.

”Courage!” he cried. ”In two days I return.”

So saying, he bounded off upon his way. As they watched him pa.s.s down the valley, springing from rock to rock, it was apparent that he meant to do all that was humanly possible to effect the salvation of his brother. Even as they looked, his figure grew smaller in the distance, and in a few minutes he was lost to view.

To describe in detail the journey of the younger guide across the mountains would be tedious. The thing can be summed up in a few words: it was magnificent, heroic. Mile upon mile he covered without pausing for breath. For the most part he kept to the valleys, where the atmosphere was stifling and humid, crossing the mountains only when by doing so he could cut off several miles.

He had food with him, but he seldom stopped to eat. Now and again he drank at a mountain stream, but seemed to grudge the time even for this.

At sunset he was still bearing onward. He had cast aside the greater part of his clothing, and the perspiration poured off him, and the veins stood out upon his temples like knotted strands of cord. For all that, he went on and on beneath the stars, whilst the moon marched in the heavens. It was a race for the life of his brother.