I grasped the truth in an instant; and it is well I did, for I have little doubt that he would have shot me where I stood. If William Rushby had changed in personal appearance since last we met, of a certainty I myself had changed still more. He took me for a wild man of the woods, though he yelled at me in English, and would have killed me out of hand, had I not lifted my arms and answered him, and laughed.
"Rushby!" I cried. "Do you not know me? It is I--Dick Treadgold."
He brought down his rifle, and stared at me like one who sees a ghost.
"Dick!" said he, and then came forward, holding out his great hand, into which I placed my own.
And there we stood, and shook hands with one another, as though we had met at Charing Cross. And he was near as naked as I, and we were both so burned by the sun that the whites of our eyes were almost comical, and our hair was long like that of gipsies, and the skin upon our legs and arms had been scratched in scores of places by the thorn-trees in the forest.
"Dick!" he cried again. "I can see it now, though I would never have believed it."
"It is I who am asked to believe the most," said I. "How came you here, of all people in the world?"
"There’s a yarn at the back of that," said he. "But, first, you must tell me how you escaped from Amos."
He seated himself, as he spoke, upon a boulder that lay in the ravine; and when he moved I was reminded of a fact I had perceived already--Rushby was badly wounded and lame of a leg.
For all that, I saw that he would glean little in the way of information if we did nothing but ask one another questions; so I mastered my own curiosity, and replied to him.
"Why," I told him, "Amos tied me to a tree, and left me in the wilderness to starve. And then I fell into the hands of savage men, to whom I shall be ever grateful. From their dwellings in the forest I journeyed alone to Cahazaxa’s Temple, and thence across the plain to the Wood of the Red Fish, where I find an old friend, and still believe that I am dreaming. It is months now since I last set eyes upon a white man, and that was Amos Baverstock himself."
"Months!" cried Rushby in amazement. "You’ve not seen Baverstock--for months!"
He looked at me as if he thought that I was lying. I was at a loss to know what he was driving at, though I assured him that I spoke the truth.
