As there was nothing else to be done Alan began to climb, shifting his feet along the plank edge and his hands along the rope, which creaked and stretched beneath their threefold weight.

It was a horrible journey, and in his imagination took at least an hour.  Yet they accomplished it, for at last they found themselves huddled together but safe upon the further bank.  The sweat pouring down from his head almost blinded Alan; a deadly nausea worked within him, sickly tremors shot up and down his spine; his brain swam.  Yet he could hear Jeekie, in whom excitement always took the form of speech, saying loudly: 

“Think that man no liar what say our great papas was monkeys.  Never look down on monkey no more.  Wake up, Major, those priests monkey-men too, for we all brothers, you know.  Wait a bit, I stop their little game,” and springing up with three or four cuts of the big curved knife, he severed the remaining rope just as their pursuers reached the further side of the chasm.

They shouted with rage as the long bridge swung back against the rock, the cut end of it falling into the torrent, and waved their spears threateningly.  To this demonstration Jeekie replied with gestures of contempt such as are known to street Arabs.  Then he looked at the Mungana, who lay upon the ground a melancholy and dilapidated spectacle, for the perspiration had washed lines of paint off his face and patches of dye from his hair, also his gorgeous robes were water-stained and his gem necklaces broken.  Having studied him a while Jeekie kicked him meditatively till he got up, then asked him to set out the exact situation.  The Mungana answered that they were safe for a while, since that torrent could only be crossed by the broken bridge and was too rapid to swim.  The Asiki, he added, must go a long journey round through the city in order to come at them, though doubtless they would hunt them down in time.

Here Jeekie cut him short, since he knew all that country well and only wished to learn whether any more bridges had been built across the torrent since he was a boy.

“Now, Major,” he said, “you get up and follow me, for I know every inch of ground, also by and by good short cut over mountains.  You see Jeekie very clever boy, and when he herd sheep and goat he made note of everything and never forget nothing.  He pull you out of this hole, never fear.”

“Glad to hear it, I am sure,” answered Alan as he rose.  “But what’s to become of the Mungana?”

“Don’t know and don’t care,” said Jeekie; “no more good to us.  Can go and see how Big Bonsa feel, if he like,” and stretching out his big hand as though in a moment of abstraction, he removed the costly necklaces from their guide’s neck and thrust them into the pouch he wore.  Also he picked up the gilded linen mask which Alan had removed from his head and placed it in the same receptacle, remarking, that he “always taught that it wicked to waste anything when so many poor in the world.”