With one accord we turned and plunged from the path straight into the marsh and ran with all our might and main. The cook, who hitherto had brought up the rear, now forged to the front, springing ahead with long jumps. Occasionally, as he leaped even higher to clear a bush or a stump, I could see his kinky round head against the sky, and catch the flash of starlight on his cleaver, which he still carried. Close behind him ran Neddie Benson, who saw in the adventures of the night a more terrible fulfillment of the plump lady's prophecies than ever he had dreamed of; then came Roger and I, and at my shoulder I heard Davie's heavy breathing and Blodgett's hard gasps.
To snakes or other reptiles that may have inhabited the warm pools through which we splashed, we gave no thought. Somewhere ahead of us there was high land--had we not rowed close enough to the promontory to hear breakers? When Davie and Blodgett fairly panted to us to stop for breath, the cook and Neddie Benson with one voice urged us on to the hills where we could find rocks or trees for a shelter from which to stand off whatever savages might pursue us.
Though we tried to make as little noise as possible, our splashing and crashing as we raced now in single file, now six abreast, now as irregularly as half a dozen sheep, must have been audible to keen ears a mile away. When we came at last to woods and drier ground, we settled down to a steady jog, which was much less noisy, but even then we stumbled and fell and clattered and thrashed as we labored on.
At first we had heard in the night behind us, repeated over and over again, those hoarse, unintelligible calls and certain raucous blasts, which we imagined came from some crude native trumpet; but as we climbed, the rising mist floated about us, and hearing less of the calling and the blasts, we slowed down to a hard walk and went on up, up, up, through trees and over rocks, with the mist in our faces and obscuring the way until we could not see three feet in front of us, but had to keep together by calling cautiously now and then.
Blodgett, coming first to a ridge of rock, stopped high above us like a shadow cast by the moonlight on the mist.
"Here's the place to make a stand," he cried in his thin voice. "A nat'ral fort to lay behind. Come, lads, over we go!"