He felt quite angry with himself for his momentary panic; it was stupid and babyish. Of course fellows had been lost in the Bush, but they couldn't have been such a short way in as he must be by now. True, he had heard a story of a chap who had gone round and round like a squirrel in a cage not a mile from the outskirts of the scrub. He was "bushed," and found dead.
The boy shuddered, then literally shook himself as he urged Bolter on again to begin investigations.
"I won't think about it," he said, setting his teeth. "I must get out, and begin again; I must."
In and out of the trees he wound, trying his utmost to retrace his steps; but he had noticed nothing on the way in, and he had no landmarks to guide him. This went on so long that, fight as he would with the fear at his heart, it began to master him.
"Seems to me I am always coming back to the place I start from," he thought, with a desperate sense of helplessness; "but there isn't a bit of difference between these hateful trees. I'll mark one and try."
He cut a deep gash in the bark of the nearest to him, and went on. But though he watched most carefully, he never came on that tree again.
"As I'm not getting out," he reflected, "I must be getting deeper and deeper into the scrub. Oh, what shall I do—what shall I do? What a silly fool I have been! I might have remembered father's warnings. Bob said one ought to learn to think out all sides of a question. I didn't; and now if father goes back I shan't be there to tell him I heard the coo-ee. Oh dear, oh dear!"
He gave a gasping sigh, almost a sob. To have been so near saving Bob, and not to have done it after all—only to die "bushed"! It was enough to break a man's nerve, let alone a child's.
He went back in thought to the river bank, picturing how it would have been if he had only patiently waited, giving a coo-ee now and again to keep in touch with the answerer.
"Why, how silly I am!" he exclaimed. "If I coo-ee now he will answer me, and I can follow that."