Tramp, tramp; splash, splash; on they trudged,—stumbling over the roots of trees, tripping over the long, tough, straggling creepers which crossed their path, sometimes brought-up “all standing” and half-strangled by the cord-like llianas which hung festooned from tree to tree, their naked feet and legs torn by thorns and stabbed by the spines of the wild cactus—in thick impenetrable darkness for a couple of hours, and then the clouds suddenly vanished away on the wings of the land-breeze, the stars reappeared, the soft silvery rays of the moon streamed down once more through the gaps in the foliage, and the weary fugitives flung themselves down upon the sodden ground for a short breathing-space.
George was of opinion that, from the time they had been tramping through the forest, they ought to have very nearly reached its southern skirts; but as far as the eye could penetrate, in the uncertain moonlight, through the sylvan vistas, there was no sign of break or opening of any kind; nothing but an apparently endless succession of trees and dense undergrowth. Seeing this, Leicester began to feel uneasy. He knew that they had been travelling through the timber in anything but a straight line—indeed, to do so would have been simply a physical impossibility—and he began to fear that, in spite of all his efforts to avoid such a misfortune, they had been journeying along the arc of a circle, instead of progressing steadily in a southerly direction.
The wanderers were beginning to feel thoroughly fatigued, what with their day’s work in the fields, their exposure during the storm, and their painful tramp afterwards; but George felt that, fatigued or not, they must push on; liberty must be secured first; when that was won, they could afford time to rest, but not until then.
The first thing to be done, however, was to get a definite idea of whereabouts they were; it was obviously useless to continue plodding on, they knew not whither; besides, it was frightfully fatiguing and painful work, this marching through the forest, and George felt that it would be a positive advantage even to deviate somewhat from their direct course, if by so doing they could earlier gain the open ground once more. So, looking around him, he picked out the most lofty tree he could find, and, leaving Tom to keep watch by Walford’s side, nimbly scrambled up its trunk, and was soon among its topmost branches.
A single glance around sufficed to show him that his suspicions were correct; they were only about half a mile from the northern edge of the timber; and, consequently, rather worse off than if they had never left the wrecked waggon at all. And, worse still, George found that, after all their travelling, they were little more than three miles from the estate, the whole of which was distinctly visible from his lofty stand-point. This was rather discouraging, but there was no help for it; he now knew exactly where they were, and how much greater than even he had imagined was the necessity for immediate action; so he turned his glances in a southerly direction, and sought to discover the most direct road out of their unpleasant predicament. Here he met with an ample reward for his trouble in climbing the tree, for he saw that, if they pursued their way due south—as they could now do, directing their course by the moon—they would have to travel through at least seven miles of forest; whilst by heading in a south-westerly direction, keeping the moon a little on their left hand, they would only have to traverse some two miles of forest, after which there seemed to be tolerably open ground as far as the eye could reach. About three miles East-South-East of him he detected the gleaming white walls of a number of buildings, which he judged to be a portion of the town of Santiago; beyond it rose a curiously-shaped, double-coned mountain; away on his right lay the table-land of Mariel; and—joyous sight—through a break in the rising ground to the southward he caught a glimpse of the sea, with, far away on the utmost verge of the horizon, an appearance of land, which he conjectured must be the Isle of Pines. Noting all these matters carefully, and making a rough mental sketch of “the lay of the land,” George rapidly descended to where he had left Tom and Walford, and rapidly detailed to the former the result of his observations.
“We must be off at once,” he explained, “for we have no time to spare; we have lost nearly three good hours blundering about here blindly in this wood; it must be now nearly or quite midnight; and, if so, it leaves us only ten hours at most to reach the sea, if we are to do so without being overtaken.”
Accordingly, weary and stiff as they were, they again shouldered the pole from which Walford in his hammock was slung, and once more set out upon their journey, which, now that they were favoured by the light of the moon, they hoped would be of a somewhat more prosperous character than it had hitherto been.
Another painful and toilsome tramp of a couple of hours and they emerged, to their unbounded joy, from the southern side of the forest on to comparatively open ground. Trees and dense straggling clumps of bush were still abundant enough—far too much so, in fact—but there were wide patches of grass-land between, over which their progress was tolerably rapid. Once clear of the thick timber, George again shaped his course due south, intending to pass through the break in the rising ground which he had seen from his lofty lookout; but somehow they missed it, and this involved a great deal of toilsome climbing. At length they plunged once more into a belt of timber which stretched, seemingly for miles, across their path; and here exhausted nature gave out; Tom declared his utter inability to walk another yard, George felt scarcely better than his companion, and so, notwithstanding the terrible loss of precious time which it involved, they selected the first suitable spot they could find, and flinging themselves upon the ground, one on each side of Walford, gave themselves up to the sweetest sleep which had ever sealed their eyelids.
George was the first of the trio to awaken, and when he did so, he found, to his dismay, that the sun was already several hours high in the heavens. He immediately aroused the lad Tom, and, greatly refreshed by their sleep, the pair once more shouldered poor helpless Walford and his hammock, and resumed their flight. They were as hungry as healthy men usually are after great exertion and a fast of several hours’ duration, but they had not a particle of food with them, so they were compelled to subsist for the present upon hope, the hope that ere long they would meet with something more substantial. They felt no particular anxiety upon this score, as George knew that wild fruits of several kinds were tolerably plentiful on the island, and about half an hour after they had started they were fortunate enough to fall in with a wild plantain, the fruit of which was just in the right condition for eating. No time was lost in securing a goodly bunch of this very nutritious fruit, upon which they feasted, as they went along, until their appetites were completely satisfied.
After trudging manfully along for about a couple of hours, they found themselves upon the crest of a range of low hills, from which they caught, through a break in the scrub, a glimpse of the sea, sparkling invitingly under the noonday sun. They also caught a glimpse of something, by no means so pleasant—namely, a town of considerable dimensions immediately before them and only about two miles distant.