Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/288

 climbed unseeing into the impenetrable blackness of the night. Their instinct had told the forest people not only that their enemies were at hand, but also that the camp had been surrounded by them. They felt pretty certain that the Malays and the tamer Sakai who were with them would not attack until just before the dawn; therefore it was their object to effect their escape, if they could do so, before day- light returned to the earth.

The wild Sakai, who have never lost the arboureal habits of primitive man, can walk up the bare trunk of a trec with as much case as you ascend the door- steps of your house, and when once fairly among the branches they are thoroughly at home. The young men, accordingly, had no difficulty in climbing into the treetops, whence, swinging themselves lightly from bough to bough, they began to bridge the mor difficult places with lines of rattan, making them fast at each end. In this manner before three-quarters of an hour had elapsed they had constructed a patlı of slack-ropes some eighty yards in length, and had passed over the heads of the Malays who lay en- camped all around. They then made their way back to their fellows and gave the word for the start.

Old Ka leading, the long string of jungle-folk climbed slowly into the treetops, all treading lightly without making a sound, the anxious mothers striving to still the babies which they bore strung about their necks. Deftly they picked their way through the pitchy darkness, feeling for their foothold upon bending bough and branch, and treading with ex