"Zen ve go back?" said the guide, eagerly. He had come to the end of the open grounds; the rest of the way lay through a wilderness of shrubs that promised laborious walking.
"No, I'm hanged if we do," said Warrender. "Now we've come so far we'll not go back."
"Zen how you cross ze river?"
"Swim it. You needn't come. We'll forge straight ahead. Thanks."
He tipped the man, and plunged with Armstrong into the thicket. Ten minutes' battling with the intricately woven mass of greenery brought them to the brink of the stream almost exactly opposite to their camping-place. They stripped, bundled their clothes upon their heads, and made short work of the thirty-foot channel.
"My aunt! In native garb!" cried Pratt, as they walked up still unclothed. "'Here be we poor mariners.' Shipwrecked? Lost the dinghy?"
"No, only our tempers," replied Armstrong. "The dinghy's still at the ferry."
"I say, my uncle hasn't got back, has he?" asked Pratt.
"No. Why?"
"I thought perhaps you had met him, and got a taste of his temper, that's all. 'Tell me not in mournful numbers'--but tell me anyhow you like the cause of this Ulyssean exhibition."