“Here’s our cover; no time to work round this patch, and no need to, either,” I said.
“Well, I’m glad,” commented Kent.
“I wish we hadn’t left our overcoats behind,” I reflected. “Let’s see. Four hours till daylight. We’ll be damnably cold. Let’s go fetch ’em. Heaps of time. Nothing else to do.”
Back on the river bank I tied my handkerchief to a branch, knee-high above the ground. After a careful look round, to impress the contours of the landscape on my mind, we started back.
I had not the slightest misgivings about our ability to find our knapsacks and to disappear again into our hiding-place. The hollow where we had left them? Gracious me! I could walk there blindfolded. I could draw its shape now. My cock-sureness was not at all damped by Kent’s dismal forebodings, on which he started as we approached the spot.
We found the boat, but not our luggage; we searched for it more than half an hour, quite recklessly at the last. There were thousands of apparently identical hollows. They had multiplied exceedingly during our absence. I thought I entered them all. But our luggage was lost, and stayed lost.
“No use. We’ve got to go.” I fell in with the urging of the others at last.
At about 3:30 we stretched ourselves on the dry leaves among the oak saplings and fell asleep.