“Well,” said he, at length, “they seem to have lost us—most mysteriously; and now the only question is, shall we go back to try to find them, or shall we go on? Which needs our help most, the one who has been lost for two or three days, or those who have just left us?”
“O, as to that,” said Bart, “they are both better able to take care of themselves than Phil is; and besides, they are nearer to the settlements, and they must know the way back, for the woods have not been very thick, and we have been going in a straight course, and so it seems to me that we had better go on and try to find poor Phil.”
“I think so too,” said the priest. “At any rate we shall rest for an hour yet, and perhaps before we start they will find us.”
They remained for an hour longer, but there was no sign of the lost ones. No sound of crackling twigs, no calls for help, awakened the deep silence that reigned in the surrounding forest.
At length they rose to resume their journey in accordance with Bart’s decision. This new calamity broke up that cheerfulness and hopefulness which he had been maintaining since the priest had spoken to him those encouraging words; and the thought of Pat and Solomon wandering about, without food and without guides through this trackless forest, gave him more than his former anxiety. It seemed a succession of misfortunes that was destined to end in some kind of a tragedy, and there arose within his mind the dark anticipation of some inevitable calamity as the natural termination of all these pieces of ill-fortune.
Struggling as well as he could with these gloomy forebodings, Bart once more set out after his guides on what he now began to think a hopeless errand. But now there came other things to distract his mind from the anxieties that were harassing it in the shape of the difficulties of the way. The guides were right in their warning about the toil and labor that now lay before them. There were dense underbrushes to penetrate—so dense and so close that every step was a struggle; there were streams to ford, in which they sank to the armpits; there were swamps to cross, where there was nothing but one long struggle from one extremity to the other; and added to this there were long pathways that led over fallen trees, and through tangled weeds, and tall ferns, which impeded the feet at every step, and necessitated the most painful and the most unremittent exertion. In his progress through the woods before, Bart had found nothing like this, except for very short periods of time, and he thought that if such a journey as this had been before him he could never have escaped.
Thus far the heat had been very great. There was no wind. The air was still and stagnant; and the effort of walking, even when the walk had been easy, as at first, had been somewhat exhaustive. But now the exertion required was far greater, and what was worse, the heat far more intense. There was a torrid heat in the atmosphere that exceeded anything which he had thus far experienced, and made all exertion doubly toilsome and exhaustive. Yet in spite of all this, his deep anxiety about Phil seemed to sustain him, and though he felt ready to drop, yet he managed to maintain his march, and follow on after his guides.
At length they emerged from a tangled thicket which had offered extraordinary obstacles to their progress. They came suddenly into a wide, open place, quite bare of trees, and overgrown with low brush and trailing evergreen vines. Here there burst upon them an extraordinary sight,—so extraordinary, indeed, that they all stopped with one common impulse, and gazed in silence upon the scene before them.