"Leave me here!" he screamed. "Go ahead by yourself, Verslun! What's the
use of taking me?"
"You're coming, so you can stop kicking," I muttered. "Take your fingers
out of my eyes."
But Holman's struggles ceased then, and his head fell backward. The pain
of his leg had made the plucky youngster swoon away, and with a prayer
upon my lips I sprang again at the bulwark of vicious creepers.
I have a very vague recollection of the remainder of that trip. In my
subconscious mind I have memories of an insane struggle with a jungle
that was alive, of a fight with thorny creepers that pursued us. I
became convinced that those vines were alive, because the same thorns
that we had passed hours before rose up again in our path and waved the
scraps of bloody clothing that they had torn from Holman and myself.
At last, half insane with anxiety for the safety of the girls and our
own struggles, we staggered blindly into the patch of cleared land upon
which the camp had been pitched on the previous evening. It was
impossible to mistake the site. The embers of the big fire were still
smoking and we stared with sweat-blinded eyes at the place where the
girls' tent had been standing when we rushed off with Kaipi to
investigate the light in the hills.
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