ch
greater than the direct overland route, they would be able to accomplish
it in a much shorter time, and with considerably more ease and comfort
to themselves. With this reply the Englishmen were obliged to be
content; accordingly while Dick and the Peruvian proceeded to hunt for a
suitable tree out of which to construct a canoe, within a reasonable
distance of the river bank, Stukely, taking his bow and arrows, went off
into the forest in search of game.

There had been a time when he would have hesitated to go very far into
those depths of green shadow alone, for fear of losing himself; but that
time was now long past for both the young Englishmen. They had grown
quite accustomed to travelling through the pathless forest, to wandering
hither and thither in it in pursuit of game, and mechanically to note
while doing so a thousand signs, quite imperceptible to the novice,
whereby they were enabled to return with certainty to the spot where
they had temporarily fixed their camp. Therefore on this occasion, as
on many others, Stukely, with a word of explanation to his companions,
plunged unhesitatingly into the labyrinth of tangled undergrowth which
covered the soil between the boles of the giant trees, instinctively
taking the direction in which he would be likely soonest to come upon
the track of game.

Yet he might have been excused had he hesitated to enter such a maze as
that which reared itself within less than a hundred yards of the spot
which the party had fixed upon for their temporary camp, for there was
no semblance of a path through it, and the mode of progress consisted
simply in entering at the spot where the tangle was thinnest and, still
following the line of least resistance, in that way make one's devious
way forward. Progressing in such a fashion, it would have been quite
possible, nay more, almost inevitable, that one unaccustomed to such a
mode of travel should become hopelessly lost within the first five
minutes; but not so Stukely or Dick; they had learned to preserve their
bearings by noting the moss growing on the trunks of the trees, the
direction in which their principal branches pointed, and a hundred other
apparently trivial signs. But it was a weird place in which to be
alone, for, apart from the green twilight produced by the filtration of
the light through the dense canopy of foliage that shut out all view of
the sky overhead, the under-brake was so thick that it was seldom
possibl