Next morning, while being pulled ashore for my excursion inland, I saw Macao on the beach, crying, waving and behaving like a madman. He called out that Bourbaki was dead, and that we must come to the village. I took him into the boat and we returned to the cutter. Macao was trembling all over, uttering wild curses, sighing and sobbing like a child. Between the fingers of his left hand he frantically grasped his cartridges, and nervously kept hold of his old rifle. We could not get much out of him; all we could make out was that Bourbaki had been shot towards morning and that he himself had run away. We guessed that Bourbaki must have committed some misdemeanour; as there was a possibility of his still being alive, we decided to go and look for him; for satisfaction it was idle to hope.
According to Macao the village was quite near, so we took our rifles, armed the boys, and in ten minutes we were ashore. The youngest, a fourteen-year-old boy, was left in the whale-boat, so as to be ready to pick us up in case of need. His elder brother, a tall, stout fellow, also preferred to stay in the boat; we left him behind, and this left five of us for the expedition. Macao showed us the way, and as we followed him we watched right and left for a possible ambush. It was a disagreeable moment when we dived into the thicket, where we expected to be attacked any moment, and I could hardly blame another fat boy for dropping behind, too, to "watch the shore," as he said. Not wishing to lose any time, we let him go, for we were anxious to be in the village before the natives should have time to rally and prepare for resistance.
The path was miserable--slippery slopes, wildly knotted roots, stones, creeks and high reeds. We were kept quite busy enough watching our path, and were not careful at all about watching the bush; but we were confident that the natives, being very poor shots, would betray their presence by a random shot. We were exposed, of course, to shots from close quarters alongside the path, but we trusted to Macao's sharp eyes to detect a hidden enemy. After an hour's brisk walk, we asked Macao whether the village was still far off; every time we asked, his answer was the same: "Bim by you me catch him," or, "Him he close up." However, after an hour and a half, we began to feel worried. We had no idea whether we would find a peaceful village or an armed tribe, and in the latter case a retreat would doubtless have been fatal, owing to the long distance we would have had to go in the forest, where the white man is always at a disadvantage. But we had undertaken the adventure, and we had to see it through.