The moon was three-quarters full, and was just beginning to climb the sky.  Shalah sniffed the wind, which blew from the south-west, and set off at a sharp angle towards the north.  We were now among the woods again, and the tangled undergrowth tried me sore.  We had been going for about three hours, and, though I was hard and spare from much travel in the sun, my legs were not used to this furious foot marching.  My feet grew leaden, and, to make matters worse, we dipped presently into a big swamp, where we mired to the knees and often to the middle.  It would have been no light labour at any time to cross such a place, pulling oneself by the tangled shrubs on to the rare patches of solid ground.  But now, when I was pretty weary, the toil was about the limit of my strength.  When we emerged on hard land I was sobbing like a stricken deer.  But Shalah had no mercy.  He took me through the dark cedars at the same tireless pace, and in the gloom I could see him flitting ahead of me, his shoulders squared, and his limbs as supple as a race-horse’s.  I remember I said over in my head all the songs and verses I knew, to keep my mind from my condition.  I had long ago got and lost my second wind and whatever other winds there be, and was moving less by bodily strength than by sheer doggedness of spirit.  Weak tears were running down my cheeks, my breath rasped in my throat, but I was in the frame of mind that if death had found me next moment my legs would still have twitched in an effort to run.

At an open bit of the forest Shalah stopped and looked at the sky.  I blundered into him, and then from sheer weakness rolled on the ground.  He grunted and turned to me.  I felt his cool hand passing over my brow and cheek, and his fingers kneading the muscles of my forlorn legs.  ’Twas some Indian device, doubtless, but its power was miraculous.  Under his hands my body seemed to be rested and revived.  New strength stole into my sinews, new vigour into my blood.  The thing took maybe five minutes—­not more; but I scrambled to my feet a man again.  Indeed I was a better man than when I started, for this Indian wizardry had given me an odd lightness of head and heart.  When we took up the running, my body, instead of a leaden clog, seemed to be a thing of air and feathers.

It was now hard on midnight, and the moon was high in the heavens.  We bore somewhat to the right, and I judged that our circuit was completed, and that the time had come to steal in front of the Indian route.  The forest thinned, and we traversed a marshy piece, of country with many single great trees.  Often Shalah would halt for a second, strain his ears, and sniff the light wind like a dog.  He seemed to find guidance, but I got none, only the hoot of an owl or the rooty smell of the woodland.