ad made speeches quite as incongruous, so he
followed his companion in silence, trusting to him implicitly, and
wondering at the confidence with which he pressed on in one direction,
with apparently nothing to guide him. In fact, all looked so strange
and undisturbed that Rob at last could not contain himself.

"Mr Brazier cannot have been anywhere here, Shaddy," he cried
excitedly. "Two wild beasts must have been fighting."

"For that there bit o' string, sir?" said the man, drily. "What do you
call that, then, and that?"

He pointed up to a bough about nine feet above him, where a cluster of
orchids grew, for the most part of a sickly, pallid hue, save in one
spot, where a shaft of sunlight came through the dense leafy canopy and
dyed the strangely-formed petals of one bunch with orange, purple and
gold, while the huge mossy tree trunk, half covered with parasitic
creepers, whose stems knotted it with their huge cordage, showed traces
of some one having climbed to reach the great horizontal bough.

"That looks like Mr Brazier, his mark, sir, eh?"

"Yes, yes," cried Rob eagerly.

"Come on then, sir: we're right."

"But did he make those marks coming or returning?"

"Can't say, sir," said Shaddy, gruffly; and then, to himself, "That
ain't true, for he made 'em coming, or I'm a Dutchman."

He made another careful calculation of their position, and was about to
start again, when he caught sight of something about Rob, or rather its
absence, and exclaimed,--

"Why, where's them mushrooms?"

"Mushrooms, Shaddy! I--I don't know."

"But, Master Rob!"

"Oh, who's to think about eating at a time like this? Go on, pray; I
shall not feel happy till I see Mr Brazier again."

Shaddy uttered a low grunt, gazed up at the shaft of light which shone
upon the cluster of flowers, and then shifted the iguana again, and
tramped on sturdily for about an hour, till there was a broad glare of
light before them, and he suddenly stepped out from the greenish
twilight into sunshine and day.

"Not so bad, Mr Rob, sir, without a compass!" he said, with a smile of
triumph.

But Rob, as he stepped out, was already looking round for their
fellow-prisoner in the forest, but looking in vain. There was no sign
of human being in the solitude; and a chilly feeling of despair ran
through the lad as he forgot his weariness and made a move for the hut,
about a hundred yards away.

It was hard work to get through the low tangled gr