“’Tain’t your fault no more’n mine,” growled Spud. “Come, get a move on. Which way do we go?”
Billy looked up startled, to see the same look reflected in Spud’s face. For the first time the boys realized that in their mad flight they had given no thought to direction. Neither had the remotest idea of where the camp lay or even the direction of the bee tree. And for the first time they had become aware of how dark it had grown.
“Billy, we’re lost!” whispered Spud, a look of panic in his face.
CHAPTER XII
LOST
The test of manhood is the ability to meet an emergency squarely, to put fear one side, think clearly and act sanely. The man who does not know fear may make no claim to bravery. Courage he may possess, courage that may lead to mighty deeds, but the spirit of true heroism is not his until he has tasted of the bitterness of fear and conquered it.
Of the two boys sitting with blanched faces under the first shock of realization that they were indeed lost in the great forest, with night fast closing in, Spud was some two years the older, stocky in build, well muscled, apparently fitted in every way to be the leader. Billy, on the other hand, was rather under size, wiry, quick moving, with the activity of nervous energy, and highly imaginative. The sudden fear that whitened Spud’s sun-browned face clutched at Billy’s heart as well and prompted him to leap to his feet and plunge after Spud in response to the latter’s panic shaken, “Come on! We better keep going, and maybe we’ll come out somewhere!”
For a few minutes they tore along in frantic haste. Then Billy showed the stuff of which he was made. “Stop, Spud!” he yelled sharply.
It was the voice of authority. It cut through the terror of the fleeing boy in front and brought him up short. Billy had taken command. He began to speak rapidly.
“We’re a couple of idiots. This ain’t goin’ to get us nowhere unless it’s into more trouble, maybe. We’re doin’ just what always gets lost people into trouble and gets ’em more lost. The thing to do is to sit down and talk it over and try to decide just what we ought to do. Pretty Scouts we are, running like a couple of silly hens at the first scare! Wonder what the big chief would say if he could see us, after all the lectures he’s given on what to do when you get lost. Here we are, and the question is, What are we going to do about it? What do you say?”