certain was that he had crossed the stream, and that his business,
whatever it was, had been with the few acres of tumbled wilderness
below the precipices.

I spent a busy morning there, but found nothing except the
skeleton of a sheep picked clean by the ravens. It was a thankless
job, and I got very cross over it. I had an ugly feeling that I was on
a false scent and wasting my time. I wished to Heaven I had old
Peter with me. He could follow spoor like a Bushman, and would
have riddled the Portuguese jew's track out of any jungle on earth.
That was a game I had never learned, for in the old days I had always
left it to my natives. I chucked the attempt, and lay disconsolately
on a warm patch of grass and smoked and thought about Peter. But my
chief reflections were that I had breakfasted at five, that it was now
eleven, that I was intolerably hungry, that there was nothing here to
feed a grasshopper, and that I should starve unless I got supplies.

It was a long road to my cache, but there were no two ways of it.
My only hope was to sit tight in the glen, and it might involve a
wait of days. To wait I must have food, and, though it meant
relinquishing guard for a matter of six hours, the risk had to be
taken. I set off at a brisk pace with a very depressed mind.

From the map it seemed that a short cut lay over a pass in the
range. I resolved to take it, and that short cut, like most of its kind,
was unblessed by Heaven. I will not dwell upon the discomforts of
the journey. I found myself slithering among screes, climbing steep
chimneys, and travelling precariously along razor-backs. The shoes
were nearly rent from my feet by the infernal rocks,which were all
pitted as if by some geological small-pox. When at last I crossed the