tis which laced its coils, thick
as a man's wrist, across the cleft. But I know that the hole cannot
have been less than twenty feet deep, for I had to descend to the
bottom of it to recover my musket.

That fall committed me, too. Within five minutes of my first
introduction to the _macchia_ I had learnt how easily a man may be
lost in it; and in less than half of five minutes I had lost not only
my way but my temper. To pursue after the hogs was nearly hopeless:
all sound of them was swallowed up in the tangle of scrub. Yet I
held on, crawling through thickets of lentisk, tangling my legs in
creepers, pushing my head into clumps of cactus, here tearing my
hands and boots on sharp granite, there ripping my clothes on prickly
thorns. Once I found what appeared to be a goat-track. It led to
another cleft of rock, where, beating down the briers, I looked down
a chasm which ended, thirty feet below, in a whole brake of cacti.
The scent of the crushed plants was divine: and I crushed a plenty of
them.

After a struggle which must have lasted from twenty minutes to half
an hour, I gained the ridge which had seemed but three minutes away,
and there sat down to a silent lesson in geography. I had given up
all hope of following the hogs or discovering my comrades. I knew
now what it means to search for a needle in a bottle of hay, but with
many prickles I had gathered some wisdom, and learnt that, whether I
decided to go forward or to retreat, I must survey the _macchia_
before attempting it again.

To go forward without a clue would be folly, as well as unfair to my
father, whom my two shots must have alarmed. I decided therefore to
retreat, but first to mount a craggy pile of granite some fifty yards
on my left, which would give me not only a better survey of the bush,
but perhaps even a view over the tree-tops and down upon the bay
where the _Gauntlet_ lay at anchor. If so, by the movements on board
I might learn whether or not my father had reached her with his
commands before taking my alarm.

The crags were not easy to climb: but, having hitched the musket in
my bandolier, I could use both hands, and so pulled myself up by the
creepers which festooned the rock here and there in swags as thick as
the _Gauntlet's_ hawser. Disappointment met me on the summit.
The trees allowed me but sight of the blue horizon; they still hid
the shores of the bay and our anchorage. My eminence, however,
showed me a track, f