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Updated: May 11, 2025
Fred Ashman moving slowly and lost in reverie, Burkhardt prowling like a wild beast behind him, with Ziffak clinging to the heels of the wretch as if he were his very shadow. The moon, which gave but faint light at the beginning, increased in power as the minutes passed. Ziffak fell back, so that if Burkhardt should look around, he would not recognize though he might see him.
Time was of the first importance, and all the paddles in the craft were plied with the utmost possible vigor, each yard passed adding to the hope that hostilities were over for the time. Probably three-fourths of the distance was accomplished, when a low exclamation from Ashman caused all to cease paddling and gaze at the shore which he was watching with such interest.
Ziffak promptly replied that there could be no earthly objection to anything of that nature, and springing to his feet, gun in hand, he bade his friends good-bye, saying he expected to be back with them at the end of an hour or so. It cannot be said that Ashman had any special errand in view, when he formed this resolution, which was explainable upon the well known laws governing the human mind.
Without saying good-bye, he rose to his feet, and walking rapidly off, soon disappeared in the direction of the spot where took place his encounter with the puma and his meeting with Fred Ashman. He had not been gone long, when those left in camp caught sight of the little boat skimming swiftly across the Xingu below them.
This rendered them less liable to discovery by their enemies in the neighborhood. Ashman held his position until the two could study their location and gain an idea of the points of the compass.
But the entire distance was almost passed, and the hearts of the two were beating high with increasing hope, when Long, with a gasp of terror, grasped the arm of the Professor with incredible force, and jerking him backward, pointed with his extended finger to the camp in front of them. Meanwhile, Fred Ashman and Aaron Johnston the sailor, found themselves involved in a most stirring experience.
So long as this young man remained in Ziffak's house, so long was it impossible for such meeting to take place; but, when Ashman sprang up and announced his intention of taking a stroll, Ziffak believed that it was with the intention of trying to see Ariel. That is to say, he suspected what really came to pass, though it was not in the mind of the youth.
Sure enough, they had not gone fifty feet, when they detected the trick and turned about to catch the whites before they could steal any distance from the trail. "We must leave," said Ashman; "we are too close to the path, and they are sure to find us." Johnston made no answer, and, instead of following him, sank heavily to the ground, with a groan.
Lit by the eternal fires of the volcano, it was always day; but he carried a watch, which told him that the night was far advanced, and that the bright sun would soon shine upon mountain, forest, and river again, though his heart sank at the faint prospect of it ever being his privilege to greet the orb again. The incidents of the next hour mystified both Ashman and Ariel.
A great deal of the filthy rubbish accumulated in a year is pitched into the street, often through the windows; and what the ashman on his daily round does not remove is left to be trampled to powder, in which form it steals back into the houses from which it was so lately removed.
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