Page:Green Mansions 1904.djvu/264

256 He shook his head, and after a while said, "We come to kill animals."

"You are like me now," I returned quickly; "you fear nothing."

He looked distrustfully at me, then came a little nearer and said—

"You are very brave. I should not have gone twenty days' journey with no weapons and only an old man for companion. What weapons did you have?"

I saw that he feared me, and wished to make sure that I had it not in my power to do him some injury. "No weapon except my knife," I replied, with assumed carelessness. With that I raised my cloak so as to let him see for himself, turning my body round before him. "Have you found my pistol?" I added.

He shook his head; but he appeared less suspicious now and came close up to me. "How do you get food? Where are you going?" he asked.

I answered boldly, "Food! I am nearly starving. I am going to the village to see if the women have got any meat in the pot, and to tell Runi all I have done since I left him."

He looked at me keenly, 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,