To the chattering monkeys who swung from branch to branch above and looked down on me with startled curiosity, I must have presented a strange sight. My gorilla skin was tattered and torn, my face and hands were scratched and bleeding, my hair was in wild disorder. A fine caricature of a man who had known the joys of white spats and carefully creased trousers and a well cut coat, and bone-rimmed, circular spectacles!
I must have covered nearly a mile before I realized what I ought to have guessed long ago. I was lost!
It was not a pleasant discovery, and, the moment I made it, I stood still and did some very hard thinking. Now that it was too late, I saw that we should have prepared for such a contingency and marked some of the trees which flanked our pathway from the aerodrome to the cages.
I tried to recollect the way I had come, but knew that any attempt to get back to the open country where the aerodrome was situated might only lead me still further astray.
"Oh, for a 'plane—or a balloon!" I thought.
That last mental image saved me! I sought out a suitable tree, leapt up at its lowest branch, caught hold of it, and raised my bruised and weary body to the first step upwards.
I climbed slowly but alertly—and much to the alarm of a couple of monkeys perched in one of its topmost branches. They fled chattering along the pale green surface above.
Half-way up, I cursed my torn and impeding gorilla skin, discarded it, and resumed the journey in a pair of "shorts" and a shirt.
Below, everything was dark and gloomy and foreboding; but, above, the sun extended thin fingers of gold amidst the green leaves.
"If I have to die," I thought, "let it be up here, where the air is pure and there is light."