nly, a little surprised at my confidence perhaps,
then said that he was also going back and would accompany me One of the
other men now advanced, blow-pipe in hand, to join us, and, leaving the
wood, we started to walk across the savannah.

It was hateful to have to recross that savannah again, to leave the
woodland shadows where I had hoped to find Rima; but I was powerless:
I was a prisoner once more, the lost captive recovered and not yet
pardoned, probably never to be pardoned. Only by means of my own cunning
could I be saved, and Nuflo, poor old man, must take his chance.

Again and again as we tramped over the barren ground, and when we
climbed the ridge, I was compelled to stand still to recover breath,
explaining to Piake that I had been travelling day and night, with no
meat during the last three days, so that I was exhausted. This was
an exaggeration, but it was necessary to account in some way for the
faintness I experienced during our walk, caused less by fatigue and want
of food than by anguish of mind.

At intervals I talked to him, asking after all the other members of the
community by name. At last, thinking only of Rima, I asked him if any
other person or persons besides his people came to the wood now or lived
there.

He said no. "Once," I said, "there was a daughter of the Didi, a girl
you all feared: is she there now?"

He looked at me with suspicion and then shook his head. I dared not
press him with more questions; but after an interval he said plainly:
"She is not there now."

And I was forced to believe him; for had Rima been in the wood
they would not have been there. She was not there, this much I had
discovered. Had she, then, lost her way, or perished on that long
journey from Riolama? Or had she returned only to fall into the hands
of her cruel enemies? My heart was heavy in me; but if these devils in
human shape knew more than they had told me, I must, I said, hide my
anxiety and wait patiently to find it out, should they spare my
life. And if they spared me and had not spared that other sacred life
interwoven with mine, the time would come when they would find, too
late, that they had taken to their bosom a worse devil than themselves.

CHAPTER XIX

My arrival at the village created some excitement; but I was plainly no
longer regarded as a friend or one of the family. Runi was absent, and
I looked forward to his return with no little apprehension; he would
doubtless decide m