only the earth to touch again, and
slowly her consciousness returned. Jack stumbled to her feet and made
for the faint light at the tunnel entrance. She took a few uncertain
steps and sank down in a little heap on the outside at the foot of one
of the hills. Drops of rain were falling, and the wind whistled through
the tops of the tallest pine trees and swirled around the crests of the
lonely hills. "Jim! Jim! surely you haven't left me!" Jack cried aloud.
She was not usually timid or nervous, but the deserted place had alarmed
her when she came to it early in the afternoon. Now she was alone in it,
and about to face a fierce summer storm. Dulled by the pain in her head
and by hunger and thirst, for Jim had carried the food and water bottle
away in his pockets, she was uncertain as to how she had come to the
mine and whether she would ever be able to keep to the return trail.

Jack's face was white and her expression unusual, while just over her
temple there was an ugly bruise, and she did not feel able to think
clearly. Once she put her hand to her head and was surprised to find her
hair damp with wisps of wet curls streaking her forehead. Then she
wondered what had become of her hat. An instant later she knew she had
dropped it off her head when she fell inside the mine, but nothing would
have induced her to go in again to find it. If Jim came back, perhaps he
or Carlos would get it for her. Sometimes she was not certain of whether
Jim and Carlos had just gone away for a few minutes or whether she had
been waiting for them a great many hours. Then she pictured them back at
their tent in the green place by the quiet stream, and wondered what
they would do when she did not come.

It began to rain harder and faster in big pelting drops; lumps of hail
beat down on Jack's shoulders and unprotected head. She ran to the woods
to hide, but the place was so sodden and wet and ghostly in the twilight
that she would not enter it. There was nothing to do but to try to find
her way back to camp alone. Jack thought her head ached less and her
decision a wise one. She did not realize that her friends could return
to the old mine for her, but once missing the trail back to them she
would be utterly lost in the wilderness. Jack recalled that several
miles ahead there was a deep gorge with high walls on either side of
it, and that she and Jim and Carlos had followed a path at the side of
this ravine for a part of their journey. She wou