After what seemed a very long time the negro came back, carrying a long green rope which he had plaited from strands of creepers. His face beamed with excitement and joy. Making one end of the rope fast to a sapling that grew near the edge of the pit, he threw the other end down and laughed when he saw that a long coil lay at the bottom. Then he swarmed down until he stood over Tom, and exclaimed: "Sah climb; all right now." "Who are you?" Tom asked again. "Me Mwesa. No talk now: talk bimeby. Dis bad place." But climbing was easier said than done. Tom was amazed to find how weak he was after only twenty-four hours’ confinement in the pit. "Have I so little staying power?" he thought. But twenty-four hours in heat and squalor, without food or water, with a wounded leg and a sprained ankle, and a mind racked with anxiety and foreboding, would have put a tax on the strongest. He found himself unable to climb. Whereupon Mwesa knotted the rope about his waist, swarmed up the rope again, and hauled until sweat poured from his body. As soon as Tom was safely over the brink, the lad let himself down once more into the pit, and returned with Tom’s rifle and a couple of the sharpened stakes. "Come ’long, sah," he said: "me find place." Tom allowed himself to be helped along, asking no questions, content for the present to have regained freedom after the horrors of the past twenty-four hours. Mwesa led him along the old native track, in the opposite direction from the plantation. Presently they came to a brook tumbling over rocks. Here he bathed his aching limbs and drank deep draughts. "Where are you taking me?" he asked. "No savvy, sah: all right bimeby," replied the boy. They started again. Mwesa kept carefully to the track, tracing it unerringly even where it was almost obliterated. The forest was thick all round, and Tom, at another time, might have felt uneasy at this apparently aimless wandering. Now, however, one way was as good as another, so long as it did not lead back to the plantation. Mwesa had no doubt guessed that the track would sooner or later lead to a clearing. After more than an hour’s painful walk, Tom found himself at the edge of what had once been an open space, but was now an expanse covered with scrub and forest trees of recent growth. "Stay dis place, sah," said the negro.