CHAPTER XIII.
JACK’S EXPERIENCE.
When Jack left the other members of the Zero Club to look for a suitable camping-place for the night, he had no intention of walking any great distance away.
He struck down the lake shore, in a direction directly opposite to that taken by Harry, and at almost right angles to that pursued by the others.
Jack walked probably fifty yards before coming to anything but a flat surface of snow and ice, with here and there a tree or a bush.
“This is no good,” he murmured to himself. “I’ve a good mind to go back and try in the other direction.”
Had he done so, he might have saved himself all the trouble that followed, and likewise saved the others from a deal of anxiety concerning his welfare.
But Jack remembered that Harry had gone off in the opposite direction, and so he kept on until he reached a small rise of ground, beyond which was a dense thicket of great trees, some all of a hundred feet in height.
“There ought to be a first-rate place among those trees,” he thought. “I’ll investigate a bit and see.”
Jack walked in among the trees and soon located a spot between several tall maples that he thought would be just the thing. Five trees were in a semi-circle, and he calculated that by heaping the brush around them a temporary shelter that would be both safe and warm would be secured.
He walked around the trees, and then to a spot a few yards away, where brush grew thickly.