Such a predicament would have discouraged older hearts than theirs. The long wandering in the swamp, the fight with the alligator and then one with the cougar, and after all to find themselves apparently no nearer deliverance than when they started—it was a bitter pill to swallow.
But no one of the boys was of the kind that accepts defeat easily, and after the first pang of something akin to despair had vanished, they pulled themselves together and faced the situation bravely.
“We’re a long way from being licked yet,” declared Bobby. “We’ll have to go back a way, and keep our eyes open for some sign of a path leading off from the one we used to get here.”
“Yes, but if there had been, one, we’d probably have seen it as we came along,” objected Fred.
“But on the other hand,” argued Bobby, “we didn’t know then that this path would lead us into nothing at all, the way it has, and we weren’t keeping such a sharp lookout for something better. At any rate, seeing that we can’t fly over the tops of these trees, it seems to me that’s our only chance.”
“Looks that way to me, too,” agreed Lee, “and the quicker we go the better, because it’s going to get dark within another two hours.”
“All right, then,” said Bobby, decisively, “right about face, and we’ll be on our way.”
They had gone about a mile, and were beginning to give up all hope of ever getting out of their predicament, when suddenly Bobby came to an abrupt halt.
Some ten feet off the narrow track they were on, stood two giant boulders, close together, with hardly room between them for a grown man to squeeze through. The boys had hardly noticed them when they had passed them going in the other direction, but now Bobby’s keen young eyes had seen some sign on one of them that caused his heart to leap. He ran over to the larger of the two boulders to verify his discovery, and there, sure enough, almost erased by the wind and weather but still perfectly plain to keen eyes, was the outline of an arrow rudely daubed on the face of the rock.
“But it seems to be pointing right between the rocks,” said Lee, as all three boys bent over the faint outline.