About Five O'clock I Was Off Ahead And Noticed A Path Which I Had
Been Told I Should Meet With, And, When Met With, I Must Follow.
The Path Was Slightly Indistinct, But By Keeping My Eye On It I
Could See It.
Presently I came to a place where it went out, but
appeared again on the other side of a clump of underbush fairly
distinctly.
I made a short cut for it and the next news was I was
in a heap, on a lot of spikes, some fifteen feet or so below ground
level, at the bottom of a bag-shaped game pit.
It is at these times you realise the blessing of a good thick skirt.
Had I paid heed to the advice of many people in England, who ought
to have known better, and did not do it themselves, and adopted
masculine garments, I should have been spiked to the bone, and done
for. Whereas, save for a good many bruises, here I was with the
fulness of my skirt tucked under me, sitting on nine ebony spikes
some twelve inches long, in comparative comfort, howling lustily to
be hauled out. The Duke came along first, and looked down at me. I
said, "Get a bush-rope, and haul me out." He grunted and sat down
on a log. The Passenger came next, and he looked down. "You kill?"
says he. "Not much," say I; "get a bush-rope and haul me out." "No
fit," says he, and sat down on the log. Presently, however, Kiva
and Wiki came up, and Wiki went and selected the one and only bush-
rope suitable to haul an English lady, of my exact complexion, age,
and size, out of that one particular pit. They seemed rare round
there from the time he took; and I was just casting about in my mind
as to what method would be best to employ in getting up the smooth,
yellow, sandy-clay, incurved walls, when he arrived with it, and I
was out in a twinkling, and very much ashamed of myself, until
Silence, who was then leading, disappeared through the path before
us with a despairing yell. Each man then pulled the skin cover off
his gun lock, carefully looked to see if things there were all right
and ready loosened his knife in its snake-skin sheath; and then we
set about hauling poor Silence out, binding him up where necessary
with cool green leaves; for he, not having a skirt, had got a good
deal frayed at the edges on those spikes. Then we closed up, for
the Fans said these pits were symptomatic of the immediate
neighbourhood of Efoua. We sounded our ground, as we went into a
thick plantain patch, through which we could see a great clearing in
the forest, and the low huts of a big town. We charged into it,
going right through the guard-house gateway, at one end, in single
file, as its narrowness obliged us, and into the street-shaped town,
and formed ourselves into as imposing a looking party as possible in
the centre of the street.
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