The memory that the man possessed was so keen, his anxiety to pierce the veil before him was so overpowering, was it possible that like a hound hunting by sight instead of smell, he would lead them straight?
Only by following the exact track they had come by, could Berselius pierce back into that past he craved to see. Only by putting tree to tree and ridge to ridge, memory to memory, could he collect what he had lost.
Could he do this?
The life of the whole party depended upon the answer to that question.
The track they ought to follow was the track by which the herd had led them. Adams could not tell whether they were following that track—even Félix could scarcely have told—for the dew and the wind had made the faint traces of the elephants quite indiscernible now to civilized eyes; and Berselius never once looked at the ground under his feet, he was led entirely by the configuration of the land. That to the eyes of Adams was hopeless. For the great elephant country is all alike, and one ridge is the counterpart of another ridge, and one grassy plain of another grassy plain, and the scattered trees tell you nothing when you are lost, except that you are lost.
The heat of the day was now strong on the land; the porters sweated under their loads, and Adams, loaded like them, knew for once in his life what it was to be a slave and a beast of burden.
Berselius, who carried nothing, did not seem to feel the heat; weak though he must have been from his injury and the blood-letting. He marched on, ever on, apparently satisfied and well pleased as horizon lifted, giving place to new horizon, and plain of waving grass succeeded ridge of broken ground.
But Adams, as hour followed hour, felt the hope dying out in his breast, and the remorseless certainty stole upon him that they were out of their track. This land seemed somehow different from any he had seen before; he could have sworn that this country around them was not the country through which they had pursued the herd. His hope had been built on a false foundation. How could a man whose memory was almost entirely obscured lead them right? This was not the case of the blind leading the blind, but the case of the blind leading men with sight.
Berselius was deceiving himself. Hope was leading him, not memory.
And still Berselius led on, assured and triumphant, calling out, “See! do you remember that tree? We passed it at just this distance when we were coming.” Or, now, “Look at that patch of blue grass. We halted for a minute here.”