At midnight we filed silently out of camp, and felt our way in the
dark through the worst stretch of country we had yet encountered. The
ferns rose above our hips, and the rocks and fallen logs over which we
stumbled were slippery with moss. Every minute a man was thrown by a
trailing vine or would plunge over a fallen tree-trunk, and there
would be a yell of disgust and an oath and a rattle of accoutrements.
The men would certainly have been lost if they had not kept in touch
by calling to one another, and the noise we made hissing at them for
silence only added to the uproar.

At the end of three hours our guides informed us that for the last
half-mile they had been guessing at the trail, and that they had now
completely lost themselves. So Laguerre sent out Miller and the native
scouts to buskey about and find out where we were, and almost
immediately we heard the welcome barking of a dog, and one of the men
returned to report that we had walked right into the town. We found
that the first huts were not a hundred yards distant. Laguerre
accordingly ordered the men to conceal themselves and sent Miller, one
of Garcia's officers, and myself to reconnoitre.

The moonlight had given way to the faint gray light which comes just
before dawn, and by it we could distinguish lumps of blackness which
as we approached turned into the thatched huts of the villagers. Until
we found the main trail into the town we kept close to the bamboo
fences of these huts, and then, still keeping in the shadows, we
followed the trail until it turned into a broad and well-paved street.

Except for many mongrel dogs that attacked us, and the roosters that
began to challenge us from every garden, we had not been observed,
and, so far as we could distinguish, the approach to the town was