TRUE; and I thought, forbye, that, if the great powers go on
as they are going, and the Chief Justice delays, it would
come truer still; and the war-conch will sound in the hills,
and my home will be inclosed in camps, before the year is
ended. And all at once - mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the
spot - a strange thing happened. I saw a liana stretch
across the bed of the brook about breast-high, swung up my
knife to sever it, and - behold, it was a wire! On either
hand it plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where
it goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I
know no more than - there it is. A little higher the brook
began to trickle, then to fill. At last, as I meant to do
some work upon the homeward trail, it was time to turn. I
did not return by the stream; knife in hand, as long as my
endurance lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested bush.

At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as high as
the elbows by the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a
tough liana - a rotten trunk giving way under my feet; it was
deplorable bad business. And an axe - if I dared swing one -
would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass. Of a
sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps,
bushing out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I
raised my eyes and looked ahead; and, by George, I was no
longer pioneering, I had struck an old track overgrown, and
was restoring an old path. So I laboured till I was in such
a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs could scarce have
found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the
stream; made my way down that stony track to the garden,
where the smoke was still hanging and the sun was still in