“What, are we to run, Tom?”

“Yes!  I want to get to the river of quartz as soon as possible,” was the dry answer.

“With all my heart.”

After running about half a mile, George pulled up, and they walked.

“What do you keep looking behind for, Tom?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“You fidget me, Tom!”

“Can’t help it.  I shall be like that till daylight.  They have shaken my nerves among them.”

“Don’t give way to such nonsense.  What are you afraid of?”

“I am not afraid of anything.  Come, George, another run.”

“Oh, as you like.  This beats all.”

This run brought them to the end of the broad road, and they found two smaller paths; after some hesitation, Robinson took the left-hand one, and it landed them in such a terribly thick scrub they could hardly move.  They forced their way through it, getting some frightful scratches, but after struggling with it for a good half hour, began to fear it was impenetrable and interminable, when the sun rising showed them a clear space some yards ahead.  They burst through the remainder of the scrub, and came out upon an old clearing full a mile long and a quarter of a mile broad.  They gave a hurrah at the sight of it, but when they came to walk on it the ground was clay and so sticky with a late shower that they were like flies moving upon varnish, and at last were fain to take off their shoes and stockings and run over it on the tips of their toes.  At the end of this opening they came to a place like the “Seven Dials”—­no end of little paths into the wood, and none very promising.  After a natural hesitation, they took the one that seemed to be most on their line of march, and followed it briskly till it brought them plump upon a brook, and there it ended.  Robinson groaned.

“Confound the bush,” cried he.  “You were wrong not to let me bring Jacky.  What is to be done?”

“Go back.”

“I hate going back.  I would rather go thirty miles ahead than one back.  I’ve got an idea; off shoes and paddle up the stream; perhaps we shall find a path that comes to it from the other side.”

They paddled up the stream a long way, and at last, sure enough, they found a path that came down to the stream from the opposite side.  They now took a hasty breakfast, washing it down with water from the brook, then dived into the wood.

The sun, was high in heaven, yet still they had not got out of the bush.

“I can’t make it out, George; there is nothing to steer by, and these paths twist and turn so.  I don’t think we shall do any good till night.  When I see the Southern Cross in the sky I shall be able to steer northeast.  That is our line.”

“Don’t give in,” said George; “I think it looks clearer ahead.  I believe we are at the end of it.”

“No such luck, I am afraid,” was the despondent reply.

For all that, in a few yards more they came upon an open place.