t take him as a passenger. So Spanish
Dick slung him in front of the saddle "before the mast" as Shard
called it, for they still carried a mast on the front of the saddle,
and away they galloped together. "Rough weather," said Shard, but he
surveyed the forest as he went and the long and short of it was he
found a place where the forest was less than half a mile thick and the
Desperate Lark might get through: but twenty trees must be cut. Shard
marked the trees himself, sent Spanish Dick right back to watch the
Arabs and turned the whole of his crew on to those twenty trees. It
was a frightful risk, the Desperate Lark was empty, with an enemy no
more than ten knots astern, but it was a moment for bold measures and
Shard took the chance of being left without his ship in the heart of
Africa in the hope of being repaid by escaping altogether.

The men worked all night on those twenty trees, those that had no axes
bored with bradawls and blasted, and then relieved those that had.

Shard was indefatigable, he went from tree to tree showing exactly
what way every one was to fall, and what was to be done with them when
they were down. Some had to be cut down because their branches would
get in the way of the masts, others because their trunks would be in
the way of the wheels; in the case of the last the stumps had to be
made smooth and low with saws and perhaps a bit of the trunk sawn off
and rolled away. This was the hardest work they had. And they were all
large trees, on the other hand had they been small there would have
been many more of them and they could not have sailed in and out,
sometimes for hundreds of yards, without cutting any at all: and all
this Shard calculated on doing if only there was time.

The light before dawn came and it looked as if they would never do it
at all. And then dawn came and it was all done but one tree, the hard
part of the work had all been done in the night and a sort of final
rush cleared everything up except that one huge tree. And then the
cutter signalled the Arabs were moving. At dawn they had prayed, and
now they had struck their camp. Shard at once ordered all his men to
the ship except ten whom he left at the tree, they had some way to go
and the Arabs had been moving some ten minutes before they got there.
Shard took in the cutter which wasted five minutes, hoisted sail
short-handed and that took five minutes more, and slowly got under
way.

The wind was dropping still and