Also Teddy’s shouts did not echo through the woods at the time the searching parties started out, for not until Jake and Sam reached camp did it become known that the Curlytop lad was lost.
“Help! Help! Help!”
Again and again Teddy cried this, but the only answers were the echoes from the woods and hills that now were in deeper shadows.
“Oh, dear!” thought the boy. “Sitting still and shouting isn’t going to do any good. I’m going to walk along.”
And this is where Teddy made a mistake. He should have remained in one place, and then the searchers who soon started out might have found him. But when he walked on again, he wandered farther and farther away from them.
Teddy was in a sore plight. He was tired and hungry and lost. That was too much for one small boy. Any one of them was trouble enough all alone, but when the three came together—well, it was terrible, so Teddy thought, and I believe you will agree with him.
Still he was not going to give up, sit down, and cry about it. As long as there was a little light in the woods he would tramp on, hoping he might, somehow, wander back to the bungalow.
But as it grew darker and darker, and Teddy thought he saw strange sights and shadows in the woods, his heart beat very fast. Once he thought he saw a great bear thrusting out a hairy paw toward him, and he started to run. But he turned back in time to see that it was only a waving tree branch.
“I have got to get home! I just have to!” half-sobbed Teddy. On he ran again. It was so dark now that he could not see the ground very well, and his foot caught in a trailing vine, tripping him so that he fell.
“Oh, dear!” he cried.