“I say,” said Dean, at last, in almost a whisper, “I don’t want you to laugh at me for being a coward, but this does seem a creepy place. I vote we get out, before we are lost. It would be queer to find that we could not get back.”
“I am not going to laugh at you and call you a coward, for I feel a little queer myself. Are you sure that if we turned right round now and began to walk back we should get out?”
“I think so,” said Dean hesitatingly, “but don’t let’s try both together. Look here.”
“It’s all very fine to say, ‘Look here,’ when one can hardly see. It is just as if we had stepped out of day into night.”
“Nonsense!” cried Dean impatiently. “I did not want you to look. I meant that I would stand perfectly still looking straight into the darkness till you had turned round and were looking right back the way we came. Then you stand still while I turn round. Then we could not make any mistake, and we could walk out together.”
“Well,” said Mark, “that seems right, only I am afraid we did not come in straight, and I say I think we have done a very stupid thing. We ought to have taken out our knives and chipped the bark off every tree we passed.”
“Yes, but it is too late to do that, so let’s try and get out at once.”
“But what about Mak?”
“Oh, he’s a savage, and he could find his way anywhere. Now then, I am standing still. You turn round at once.”
“Done,” said Mark, and he turned sharply and backed close up to his cousin, so that they were looking now in opposite directions. “Now then, this must be right. You turn round while I stand fast.”