“That way!” Nicky pointed down the trail at the closer end of the glade.
“Then the sea is in that direction,” Tom decided. “The river must be at our right hand when we face the East, and we can’t get lost if we are careful not to get turned around.”
“How can we avoid that?” asked Nicky.
“Well, suppose you were to stand with your arm extended toward the East—that trail and the big tree. Then I’d go just as far as I could and still see you plainly, and set myself exactly in the same position. Then Cliff would go on beyond me and get himself set, picking some marker to keep all three of us in a straight line. When Cliff gets set you, Nicky, can go on beyond him, then I go beyond you again, and so we’d be sure we still had our East direction right and were moving South, and so toward the river.”
“It ought not to be very far,” conceded Cliff.
“But it’s all swamp on the South side of this glade,” objected Nicky. “I looked, and we can’t get over it, and we daren’t wade it.”
“Well, we could go on East, down the trail, parallel with the river,” Tom suggested. “Only, when we tried, last night, it ended ‘blind’ and so I guess we would waste time going that way. Maybe we had better go West, that is, up the trail. There must be some place where it will take us to the river.”
“How did we ever get into this glade from the North, when we must have been South of it and of the swamp when we came into the jungle?”
“I guess we wandered in a sort of wide circle,” Cliff explained.
They ate the eggs, hot: they were not as palatable as had been the iguana meat, but it helped to stay their hunger. They were thirsty, and began looking for water to drink as soon as they set out on the upper trail.