To his surprise, as his hand went to his knee he found his clothing wet.
“Must have crossed some small stream and in my wild fear, never knew it. No more of that. I’ll be calm. I must be calm—and I must think clearly.”
“A stream,” he mused, “means water for drinking and a place of greater safety. What’s more,” he exclaimed, attempting to spring to his feet only to be tossed back by closely woven vines and branches, “that means a way out. A small stream flows into a large one; the larger one into one still larger, and in time one comes to Rio Hondo, the old Black River. There I might find a rotting native cabin and perhaps a dugout for floating down to my camp. But first I must find the beginning. There is a beginning to all things.”
He contemplated the gathering darkness. There was yet a little time. Which way should he go? He shuddered at the thought of going back. There seemed to be an equally good chance ahead. So, slowly, always with an eye out for those terrible snakes, he crept forward into the gathering gloom.
As time went on he struggled forward, and as the darkness deepened it seemed to him that he must, Tarzan-like, spend the night in some great mahogany or Santa Maria tree. The thought was depressing. His throat ached from thirst. There were jaguars in the trees. Exhausted as he was, he might fall asleep and plunge from the tree to his death.
As this thought came near to a conviction and when hope had all but fled, he rounded a sudden turn in the trail and his eyes were half blinded by a light which was much brighter than the gloom to which his eyes had been accustomed. The light was at the spot where the bush and the trail appeared to end,—a distance of less than a hundred yards.
What could it mean? Had fate played a trick on him? Had he followed a circle in the jungle, only to return to Daego’s camp? Was this some other clearing? If so, whose could it be?
For a moment he remained there motionless, staring. Then, with a speed born of sudden hope and maddening fear, he sprinted forward toward the light.
Even as he moved forward the light faded, and night, such night as only the jungle knows, settled down over all.
Driven half mad by this sudden fading of his dreams, throwing all caution aside, Johnny rushed straight on until, with a sudden gasp, he threw himself backward. One foot had plunged into water. In another second he would have pitched head-foremost into some stream; what stream he could not know. The thing he did know very soon was that out in the water some little distance away gleamed two red balls.