"Likely he had not gone fifty feet when it killed him!" exclaimed Haynes in a horrified whisper, alluding to the fact that this was about the distance to the open hillside.
"They sting—and you finish?" muttered Manton.
"I reckon that's the way it goes," said Haynes very quietly.
"Maybe if we waited till dark?" he queried.
"And how are we going through this mess in the dark? And that's not the name for it after sundown," growled Manton sneeringly.
The truth of the objection could not be gainsaid; in silence the two men stared blankly at each other.
"But—you mean to say?" said Haynes with an odd catch in his voice.
"That's so—they've got us cinched," replied Manton shortly, even coolly, his phlegmatic nature seemingly less perturbed than the finer-fibered Haynes.
"Well, we are in a hole!" said Haynes angrily. His nerves were on edge and a dull resentment at his partner's lack of emotion came upon him.
"Well, there ain't no use taking them to camp with us; might as well stop here—maybe they'll forget it and quit," observed Manton, though his tone held no great optimism. "We've got to sit down and think it out—though I'm damn hungry right now," he added very sourly.
Haynes stared at his partner, the idea of hunger had not yet occurred to him, but at once a desire for food came upon him; the more intensely so that an appalling vista of an indefinitely prolonged incarceration lacking even an ounce of provender instantly flashed before his horrified inner vision.
For a little neither uttered another word; each sat in moody contemplation, racking his brains to discover a practical scheme of escape from the unique trap into which they had been driven. And as the moments sped, each realized more fully the hopelessness of their plight as now and again there swept up a fresh wave of the vicious sound, for which there could be but one explanation, the coming of new reinforcements of the malignant brutes.
They came in ones and twos as though stray foragers had been attracted by the commotion at the spot, and shortly there must have been assembled fully a dozen of the insects; a fact of which the beset were fully cognizant.
"Something has got to be done quick—the longer we stop the worse off we are," exclaimed Manton in a spasm of wrath. "If we only had a dog or something to tie up while we made our getaway!" he snarled in impotent anger.
"Eh! a dog?" said Haynes and paused while a flash of inspiration dawned in his light blue eyes, as his partner's random thought flung open the portals of an inner consciousness far more acute than his normal mental plane. "We ain't got a dog, but there's two of us" Again he paused.
"Sure, there's two of us—but what are you driving at? Oh, I get you—one of us hikes off taking these blasted things with him while the other beats it down to the camp and shoves off—but what about the guy who stops?" queried Manton with a puzzled frown.
"The only thing I can figure out is he's got to take a chance on it. The boat can stand on and off till dark, then creep back and the guy must be handy in the bush and make a rush for it. No reason why he shouldn't pull through, likely they'll be sort of dozy after dark, and there ain't a fly that's stuck on salt water. Anyway it's the best lineup we got," asserted Haynes feverishly.
