tumble upon it
suddenly, and be discovered before he had a chance to flee? But he put
these questions from his mind. He had set out to find the camp; no
harm had befallen him. There was a strain of doggedness in his nature;
he had won his scholarships at school and at Cambridge by sheer grit;
his tutor had declared that Tom Smith was certainly not brilliant,
but he was much better: he was sound and steady; and the same
qualities that had won him successes which more brilliant men envied,
came out in these novel circumstances in which he was placed. Tom
decided to go on.

Presently he came to a break in the woodland; he saw the stars
overhead. He was very wary now, and waited at the edge of the clearing
for a long time, peering all round, turning to listen on every side,
before he crossed and entered another belt of forest beyond. Again he
had to struggle through darkness and dense entanglements, then
suddenly he started; far ahead he thought he discerned amid the
blackness the dull glow of a fire. With infinite caution he picked his
way through the thinning undergrowth; the glow increased; and at
length he found himself on the edge of a wide open space in the midst
of which there was a camp fire, and around it the rude grass huts of
the savages. He saw no one, heard no sound; all were asleep.

Stealthily he crept round the encampment. Here and there he saw
cooking-pots, and caught the faint odour of roasted flesh. Had the
savages any store of food, he wondered. If not, his journey was vain.
The fire did not give light enough for him to see anything very
clearly. At last, however, when he had almost made the circuit of the
camp, he saw a man move out from one of the huts towards the fire, on
which he cast some logs that lay beside it. A flame shot up. As the
man returned to his hut, he put his hand into one of the cooking-pots
and drew out the limb of a small animal, from which he tore the flesh
with his teeth. Tom was satisfied. No doubt each of the pots contained
a quantity of food. Surely if he brought his comrades to the spot, and
they fell upon the camp suddenly, with loud cries and the noise of
firearms, they might strike panic into the savages, and at least have
time to possess themselves of the contents of the pots.

He looked at his watch. It was past ten o'clock.

He could return more quickly than he came, and, if he did not lose his
way, would regain his camp within half-an-hour after midnight. There
woul