When we had emerged from the tunnel the sun was already glowing crimson through the tops of the trees. As we reached the track, the short tropical twilight was beginning to fade, and before we had followed its windings for a quarter of a mile, the light had gone and the stars were twinkling through the rifts of the cloudy sky. It was fortunate that the night was not completely overcast, for had it been, I should have had no means of judging the direction in which our flight was leading us; as it was, an occasional glimpse of the “pointers” of the Great Bear told me that our average course was to the north-east. As the darkness closed in, it became impossible to maintain the pace at which we had started, for the track, although less obstructed than many forest roads, furnished but rough travelling; but we trudged along as fast as the nature of the ground would allow us, only pausing now and again to listen for sounds of pursuit. Our long and arduous day’s work had made us weary enough, but the fear of recapture was a spur that would have driven us forward even though we were dropping with fatigue; and the chance of being overtaken was not so remote either, for the path along which we were travelling appeared to be the only one that passed near to the tunnel, and its existence could hardly be unknown to the people of Aboási. Hence it seemed highly probable that a party would be sent to examine this path as soon as our traces had been found in the tunnel, and it was not unlikely that we were already being followed; so we pressed on hour after hour, until the stars that had peeped out through the haze of the lower sky, looked down upon us from the zenith, and told us that half the night was spent. The country hereabouts seemed almost uninhabited, for we saw no sign of any human dwelling until past midnight; when we hurried, as silently as we could, through the deserted street of a tiny hamlet, apparently unobserved except by an unseen pariah, whose high falsetto howls were still audible when we had left it half a mile behind. There is, however, a limit to human endurance, even under the stimulus of fear, and about two hours after midnight we agreed that we could go no further without a rest; so striking off the path to the left, we pushed our way a short distance into the forest until we reached a large tree with high buttressed roots like those of the silk-cotton. In a triangular space between two of these roots we sat down and composed ourselves for sleep, half reclining with our backs against the butt of the tree; but we had scarcely begun to doze when a loud purr sounded from within a few feet of us, and as we both at once sat bolt upright, a large, dark shape moved noiselessly away.