Heavily laden men would have found it difficult travelling by prosaic
daylight; but now, with the added impossibility of picking a route
ahead, we found ourselves in all sorts of trouble. Many times we had to
back out and try again. The ghostly flickering tree shapes against the
fathomless black offered us apparently endless aisles that nevertheless
closed before us like the doors of a trap when we attempted to enter
them.

We kept doggedly to the same general northerly direction. When you are
lost, nothing is more foolish than to make up your mind hastily and
without due reflection; and nothing is more foolish than to change your
mind once you have made it up. That way vacillation, confusion, and
disaster lie. Should you decide, after due consideration of all the
elements of the problem, that you should go east, then east you go, and
nothing must turn you. You may get to the Atlantic Ocean if nothing
else. And if you begin to modify your original plan, then you begin to
circle. Believe me; I know.

Kongoni was plainly sceptical, and said so until I shut him up with
some rather peremptory sarcasm. The bearers, who had to stumble in the
dark under heavy burdens, were good-natured and joking. This we
appreciated. One can never tell whether or not he is popular with a
native until he and the native are caught in a dangerous or disagreeable
fix.

We walked two hours as in a treadmill. Then that invaluable though
erratic sixth sense of mine awoke. I stopped short.

"I believe we've come far enough," I shouted back to C., and fired my
rifle.