ensible, they found a severe wound cleanly cut by a knife.

"He must have been attacked, then," cried Rob as he looked at the wound
in horror, while in a quiet, methodical way Shaddy proceeded to sew it
together by the simple process of thrusting a couple of pins through the
skin and then winding a thread of silk round them in turn from head to
point, after which he firmly bandaged the wound before making a reply to
Rob's words.

"Yes, my lad," he said; "right arm attacked his left. He must have been
making a chop at some of the plants on a branch, and the tool slipped.
You take out his knife and open it, and see if it ain't marked."

Shaddy was quite right, for there on the handle were some dried-up
traces of how the wound must have bled.

It was a week before the patient began to show tokens of amendment,
during which time Rob and Shaddy had been hard pressed for ways to
supply his wants. There were endless things necessary for the invalid
which they could not supply, but, from old forest lore and knowledge
picked up during his adventurous life, the guide was able to find the
leaves of a shrub, which leaves he beat into a pulp between two pebbles,
put the bruised stems into the cup of a water flask, added water, and
gave it to the patient to drink.

"It is of no use to ask me what it is, Mr Rob, sir," said the guide;
"all I know is that the Indians use it, and that there isn't anything
better to keep down fever and get up strength."

"Then it must be quinine," said Rob.

"No, my lad; it isn't that, but it's very good. These wild sort of
people seem to have picked up the knack of doctoring themselves and of
finding out poisons to put on their arrows somehow or another, and
there's no nonsense about them."

The prisoners in the vast forest--for they were as much prisoners as if
shut up in some huge building--had to scheme hard to obtain their
supplies so as to make them suitable to their patient. Fish they
caught, as a rule, abundantly enough; birds they trapped and shot with
arrows; and fruit was to be had after much searching; but their great
want was some kind of vessel in which to cook, till after several
failures Rob built up a very rough pot of clay from the river bed by
making long thin rolls and laying one upon the other and rubbing them
together. This pot he built up on a piece of thin shaley stone, dried
it in the sun, and ended by baking it in the embers--covering it over
with the hot ashes, and