t presented itself for solution
was: What was it that had gone wrong? Had the entire party met with an
accident? It was most unlikely. There were seven of them altogether,
and in the event of an accident, surely at least one of the seven would
have escaped and returned to the camp for help. Had they been seized
and carried off by brigands? When Harry put this question to the peons
who remained with him he was laughed at good-naturedly and assured that,
in the first place, there were no brigands in Peru, so far as they were
aware; and, in the second place, that if perchance there were they would
probably not have contented themselves with simply carrying off seven
men, six of whom would be only an encumbrance to them, but would almost
certainly have attacked and sacked the camp some time during the hours
of daylight, when it was left comparatively unprotected. There was but
one other probable alternative of which Harry could think, and that was
that Butler's peons, exasperated at length beyond endurance by some
fresh piece of petty tyranny on the white man's part, had deserted,
carrying off their employer with them, either with the purpose of being
revenged upon him, or in the hope that by holding him as a hostage they
might be able to secure payment of the amount of wages due to them. But
when Escombe submitted this alternative to his peons for their
consideration and opinion, they shook their heads and emphatically
declared that they did not believe that any such thing had happened.
And when further asked for their opinion as to what had happened, they
simply answered that they did not know what to think. But to Harry it
seemed that there was a certain lack of spontaneity in this reply, which
caused him to doubt whether the speakers were quite sincere in so
saying.

With a very heavy load of responsibility thus unexpectedly thrown upon
his shoulders, the young Englishman spent several anxious hours in camp
that night pondering upon what was the proper course for him now to
pursue, and he finally came to the conclusion that, having ascertained
beyond much possibility of doubt that his chief had been abducted, the
next thing to be done was to discover whither and under what
circumstances he had been carried off, and then to take the necessary
steps to effect his rescue. On the following morning, therefore, he
mustered the peons who still remained with him, and briefly explaining
to them his theory of an abductio