Forgetting his fatigue and his lame foot in the excitement, he splashed through the muddy shallows and pools, picked up his game, and brought it back to terra firma.
"Well," said he to himself, "there is nothing to be gained by rambling farther away. I may as well stay here and cook my breakfast, for I don't know which way to go, and it is as likely that I should go wrongly as in the right way. If they don't hear my gun, they will perhaps see the smoke of a fire, which will guide them."
He therefore gathered some dry fuel in a heap, and, having the good fortune to discover some cutchwood trees, collected the withered branches lying scattered around, and soon had a splendid fire. The flames emitted from the cutchwood were, however, too fierce for his cookery, so he piled on some greener wood, and sat down to pluck his birds, while the blaze was dying down to a nice glowing bed of red ashes.
We say "pluck his birds," but Ralph was no gourmand; nor was he cook to a first-class gentleman's club. Plucking was too lengthy an operation for him; he cut the skin of his game down the back, and pulled it off, inside out, like a stocking from a foot, having first chopped off the heads and legs.
This operation was completed before his fire was ready; so he took a plunge into a clear pool, reclothed himself, and then broiled his breakfast, having split his birds open like spatch-cocks.
"They are not bad," thought he, as he devoured them, tearing their limbs apart by help of fingers and knife, like a young ogre. "They are not bad, though they would have been more savoury if I had had some pepper and salt, with a dab of butter. How Agnes would have jeered at me as man-cook. I wonder what the dear old girl is doing now. She little thinks where I am. Lost in a Burmese jungle! What a pretty kettle of fish it is. I know no more than the man in the moon which way to go, or what to do. Well, no predicament is so bad that it can't be mended. If I walk straight on, I must come somewhere, sooner or later. Those fellows don't mean to join me here, that's plain. So Ralph Denham, Esq., marching orders are yours. Forward!"
He knew that he must regain the main stream of the Salween River, up the eastern bank of which his party had come; but where was the Salween? He must climb one of these mountain-spurs,—one sufficiently lofty to command a bird's-eye view of the country, so that he could take its bearings. He therefore set himself to the ascent of the most lofty hill which he could perceive.
The ascent was, however, no joke. His foot was very painful. He had dipped his handkerchief in water, and bound it tightly round the ankle, but the heat rapidly dried it, nor could he constantly find means of rewetting it to keep it cool.
The jungle grew thicker and thicker, more and more impenetrable, with every step. He had to cut his way with his knife through the tangle of creepers, linked and bound together in impenetrable masses, and his knife soon became wholly inadequate to the task.
To proceed straight forward was utterly impossible, for the thickness of the interlacing stems quite baffled his strength. He found an easier place to the right, and essayed that; but after a few steps he was pulled up again. He discovered a slighter barrier to the left, again to be baffled wholly.