Nuflo brought out from some other hiding-place two sacks; one weighing
about twenty pounds and containing smoke-dried meat, also grease and gum
for lighting-purposes, and a few other small objects. This was his load;
the other sack, which was smaller and contained parched corn and raw
beans, was for me to carry.

The old man, cautious in all his movements, always acting as if
surrounded by invisible spies, delayed setting out until an hour after
dark. Then, skirting the forest on its west side, we left Ytaioa on our
right hand, and after travelling over rough, difficult ground, with only
the stars to light us, we saw the waning moon rise not long before dawn.
Our course had been a north-easterly one at first; now it was due east,
with broad, dry savannahs and patches of open forest as far as we could
see before us. It was weary walking on that first night, and weary
waiting on the first day when we sat in the shade during the long, hot
hours, persecuted by small stinging flies; but the days and nights that
succeeded were far worse, when the weather became bad with intense heat
and frequent heavy falls of rain. The one compensation I had looked for,
which would have outweighed all the extreme discomforts we suffered,
was denied me. Rima was no more to me or with me now than she had been
during those wild days in her native woods, when every bush and bole and
tangled creeper or fern frond had joined in a conspiracy to keep her
out of my sight. It is true that at intervals in the daytime she was
visible, sometimes within speaking distance, so that I could address
a few words to her, but there was no companionship, and we were fellow
travellers only like birds flying independently in the same direction,
not so widely separated but that they can occasionally hear and see each
other. The pilgrim in the desert is sometimes attended by a bird, and
the bird, with its freer motions, will often leave him a league behind
and seem lost to him, but only to return and show its form again; for
it has never lost sight nor recollection of the traveller toiling slowly
over the surface. Rima kept us company in some such wild erratic way as
that. A word, a sign from Nuflo was enough for her to know the direction
to take--the distant forest or still more distant mountain near which we
should have to pass. She would hasten on and be lost to our sight, and
when there was a forest in the way she would explore it, resting in the
shade and findin