A meal of the sun worshippers was in no sense a ceremonious function and for that the boys were grateful, since it was not lengthened unnecessarily by any formalities.
The raw flesh of the kill hacked off in strips or hunks by each individual in accordance with his own appetite or preference, was impaled upon sticks and held over the fire, which oft times leaped up and seized upon a cooking morsel so that the culinary result was, more often than not, an unappetizing-looking hunk of meat, raw in the center and in places burnt to a crisp on the outside. The portions thus prepared were torn apart by strong teeth and bolted without mastication.
The little girl was more dainty, using a knife that one of the men loaned her for this purpose. She cut strips of the meat into uniform sizes, which she grilled with far greater care than did her companions, and in the eating of her food, as well as in the cooking, she manifested a daintiness that alone would have differentiated her from her companions.
The boys dared not move around for the purpose of stimulating their circulation for fear of arousing the suspicion of the creatures below them, thus putting them upon their guard, and for the same reason they did not converse more than was absolutely necessary and then only in the lowest of whispers. But as all things must end, so eventually the sun worshippers had appeased their hunger, the little girl had crept into the crude shelter they had built for her and the other members of the party had lain down about the fire to sleep, with the exception of one, who sat upon the fallen log tending the fire that it evidently was their intention to keep burning brightly during the night for the purpose of discouraging the too close advances of the great man eaters of the jungle.
"Do you suppose that bozo is going to sit up all night?" Doc asked in a low whisper. "We didn't bargain for that!"
"If he does," replied Dick, "I can't see how in the world we are going to get into their camp and get the girl."
"We might go around on the other side and crawl up to the rear of her shelter," suggested Doc. "Maybe we could get her out that way."
"But suppose she thought we were some animal trying to get her," suggested Dick. "She would be frightened and raise an alarm."
"We could whisper very low to her," said Doc, "and tell her that we are her friends."
"What if she is not an English girl?"
"I never thought of that," said Doc.
"I can't imagine where she came from," mused Dick, "but, of course, among the few whites in this part of Africa there are Belgians, Germans, and French as well as other nationalities besides English, so she might be most anything."
"She doesn't look like an English girl," said Doc. "She might be German though."
"Yes," said Dick, "I thought of that."
"Well," said Doc, "I can talk a little German."
"Sure you can. You can say 'yes' and 'no' and 'good morning'."
"I know the word for 'friend'," said Doc.
"Then, we will have to wait for daylight," said Dick, "so that you can say, 'Good morning, friend!'"
"You think you are funny, don't you?" said Doc.
"I don't feel funny. I only feel cold. I wish that fellow would fall asleep. He sort of looks sleepy."
"I don't think you'd fall asleep if you thought a lion would walk in and grab you if you did," said Doc, "and so I am pretty sure that we can't bank on that fellow sleeping. Whatever we do has got to be done right under his nose while he is awake and if we cannot make the girl understand us in time to head her off from screaming for help, I don't see how we are going to accomplish much."
"The best chance we have," said Dick, after a moment of thoughtful silence, "is to speak to her in French. We each know enough French to get by fairly well and nearly all Europeans, who have had any education at all, have at least a smattering of French."
"I guess you are right at that," agreed Doc, "and now that we have settled that matter, why not get busy. It will not be any easier an hour from now, or two hours from now, or any other time than it is right this minute."
"That suits me," said Dick, "but let's plan the thing out carefully before we start," and for a few minutes the boys crouched in earnest, whispered conversation.
CHAPTER SEVEN—IN THE NICK OF TIME
Ulp sat upon the fallen tree gazing into the fire which had lighted the surrounding jungle with its leaping, fitful flames. His black shadow, huge and grotesque, danced weirdly against the shelter in which Kla, the little unwilling high priestess of the sun worshippers, lay wide-eyed and miserable. She could not accustom herself to the terrors of the jungle nights. She knew that great hunting beasts prowled through the black shadows.
The spine-chilling scream of the leopard and the roar of the lion were as terrifying tonight as they had been the first night that she had heard them, nor could she ever entirely allay her fear of the frightful men into whose clutches she had fallen.
Over and over in her mind she revolved the same futile, hopeless plans for escape that she had conjured a thousand times and a thousand times abandoned, and yet, again, they were in the forefront of her thoughts as she lay watching the shadow of Ulp leaping and dancing against the frail wall of her shelter, and Ulp gazed into the fire, letting his own thoughts revolve in his muddy brain. For the most part they were thoughts of fear and hate, and the object of both was Gulm, for Ulp knew that Gulm did not like him and that if a suitable sacrifice was not soon found, it might more likely be Ulp who would be permanently extinguished by the sacrificial knife than any other of the company.
Ulp was hideous, grotesque, sullen, taciturn, ignorant, vindictive, usually half-starved, always entirely uncomfortable from heat or cold or vermin. Life did not seem to offer much to Ulp and yet he clung as tenaciously to it and loved it and nursed it with a fervor quite equal to that of humanity's most favored creature.
In other words, Ulp did not wish to die, and as he sat there upon the log with the firelight playing upon his crooked, hairy body and his ugly, hairy face, he was groping through his turbid brain for some plan to thwart Gulm's bloody intentions toward him.
If he could only find some other sacrifice that would be acceptable to The Flaming God, he knew that Gulm would be satisfied, since naturally the high priest did not wish to weaken the numerical strength of his party by offering its members to The Flaming God unless there was no alternative, but it seemed to Ulp, not even remotely possible that he might discover a substitute, since Gulm avoided the haunts of the natives, knowing full well that his small party of twenty, illy armed as they were, would stand no chance against the black warriors of the interior.
But there was another possibility that loomed large in Ulp's mind and this was based upon his belief that The Flaming God found no sacrifice acceptable unless it was offered to Him through the medium of a sacrificial knife, wielded by the high priestess. Therefore, he reasoned, if there was no high priestess, there would be less likelihood that a sacrifice would be offered to his hungry deity. But how to dispose of the little high priestess without bringing suspicion and punishment upon himself—that was the question. He turned and glared at the shelter, beneath which lay the new La. In the distance, a lion roared. How fortunate it would be, thought Ulp—at least how fortunate for him—if Numa the lion, hungry and searching for food, should accidentally be led to the rear of the shelter of the high priestess.
He thought this matter over seriously and he thought of a wonderful story that he could tell to Gulm in the morning after Numa had come and carried little Kla away.