rt; and they camped by a pool and lit their fire, and slept
as men sleep in the pure air of the woods and the desert.

Next morning they pursued their journey, Berselius still confident. At
noon, however, he began to exhibit slight signs of agitation and anxiety.
The trees were thickening around them; he still knew the way, but the view
before him was getting shorter and shorter as the trees thickened; that is
to say, the mist was coming closer and closer. He knew nothing of the
dense jungle before them; he only knew that the clear road in front of him
was shortening up rapidly and horribly, and that if it continued to do so
it would inevitably vanish.

The joy that had filled his heart became transformed to the grief which
the man condemned to blindness feels when he sees the bright world fading
from his sight, slowly but surely as the expiring flame of a lamp.

He walked more rapidly, and the more rapidly he went the shorter did the
road before him grow.

All at once the forest--which had been playing, up to this, with Berselius
as a cat plays with a mouse--all at once the forest, like a great green
Sphinx, put down its great green paw and spoke from its cavernous heart--

"I am the Forest."

They had passed almost at a step into the labyrinths. Plantain leaves hit
them insolently in the face, lianas hung across their path like green
ropes placed to bar them out, weeds tangled the foot.

Berselius, like an animal that finds itself trapped, plunged madly
forward. Adams following closely behind heard him catching back his breath
with a sob. They plunged on for a few yards, and then Berselius stood
still.

The forest was very silent, and seemed listening. The evening light and
the shade of the leaves cast gloom around them. Adams could hear his own
heart thumping and the breathing of the porters behind him. If Berselius
had lost his way, then they were lost indeed.

After a moment Berselius spoke, as a man speaks whose every hope in life
is shattered.

"The path is gone."

Adams's only reply was a deep intake of the breath.

"There is nothing before me. I am lost."

"Shall we try back?" said Adams, speaking in that hard tone which comes
when a man is commanding his voice.

"Back? Of what use? I cannot go back; I must go forward. But here there is
nothing."

The unhappy man's voice was terrible to hear. He had marched so
triumphantly all day, drawing nearer at each step to himself, to that self
which me