It was the fit that saved them.  In his maniacal contortions he swung around to Neewa’s side of the sapling, when, with their halter once more free from impediment, Neewa bolted for safety.  Miki followed, yelping at every jump.  No longer did Neewa feel a horror of the river.  The instinct of his kind told him that he wanted water, and wanted it badly.  As straight as Challoner might have set his course by a compass he headed for the stream, but he had proceeded only a few hundred feet when they came upon a tiny creek across which either of them could have jumped.  Neewa jumped into the water, which was four or five inches deep, and for the first time in his life Miki voluntarily took a plunge.  For a long time they lay in the cooling rill.

The light of day was dim and hazy before Miki’s eyes, and he was beginning to swell from the tip of his nose to the end of his bony tail.  Neewa, being so much fat, suffered less.  He could still see, and, as the painful hours passed, a number of things were adjusting themselves in his brain.  All this had begun with the man-beast.  It was the man-beast who had taken his mother from him.  It was the man-beast who had chucked him into the dark sack, and it was the man-beast who had fastened the rope around his neck.  Slowly the fact was beginning to impinge itself upon him that the rope was to blame for everything.

After a long time they dragged themselves out of the rivulet and found a soft, dry hollow at the foot of a big tree.  Even to Neewa, who had the use of his eyes, it was growing dark in the deep forest.  The sun was far in the west.  And the air was growing chilly.  Flat on his belly, with his swollen head between his fore paws, Miki whined plaintively.

Again and again Neewa’s eyes went to the rope as the big thought developed itself in his head.  He whined.  It was partly a yearning for his mother, partly a response to Miki.  He drew closer to the pup, filled with the irresistible desire for comradeship.  After all, it was not Miki who was to blame.  It was the man-beast—­and the rope!

The gloom of evening settled more darkly about them, and snuggling himself still closer to the pup Neewa drew the rope between his fore paws.  With a little snarl he set his teeth in it.  And then, steadily, he began to chew.  Now and then he growled, and in the growl there was a peculiarly communicative note, as if he wished to say to Miki: 

“Don’t you see?—­I’m chewing this thing in two.  I’ll have it done by morning.  Cheer up!  There’s surely a better day coming.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The morning after their painful experience with the wasp’s nest, Neewa and Miki rose on four pairs of stiff and swollen legs to greet a new day in the deep and mysterious forest into which the accident of the previous day had thrown them.  The spirit of irrepressible youth was upon them, and, though Miki was so swollen from the stings of the wasps that his lank body and overgrown legs were more grotesque than ever, he was in no way daunted from the quest of further adventure.