Father Friday stopped. "Does it not seem to you that we are merely going round and round, Tom?" he asked.
I assented gloomily.
"Have you a compass?"
I shook my head.
"Nor have I," he added. "I did not think of bringing one, being so sure of the way. How could we have turned from it so inadvertently? Well, we must calculate by the sun. The point for which we are bound is in a southerly direction."
Having taken our bearings, we retraced our steps a short distance, then pushed forward for an hour or more, without coming out upon the bridle-path which we expected to find. Another hour passed; the sun was getting high. Father Friday paused again.
"What time is it?" he inquired.
I looked at the little silver watch my mother gave me when I left home.
"Nine o'clock!" I answered, with a start.
"How unfortunate!" he exclaimed. "There is now no use in pressing on farther. We should arrive too late at our destination. We may as well rest a little, and then try to find our way home. It is unaccountable that I should have missed the way so stupidly."
But it was one thing to order a retreat, as we soldiers would call it, and quite another to go back by the route we had come. We followed first one track and then another; but the underbrush grew thicker and thicker, and at length the conviction was forced upon us that we were completely astray. I climbed a tree—it was no easy task, as any one who has ever attempted to climb a pine will agree. I got up some distance, after a fashion; but the branches were so thick and the trees so close together that there was nothing to be discerned, except that I was surrounded by what seemed miles of green boughs, which swayed in the breeze, making me think of the waves of an emerald sea.