Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/276

 a mile without encountering running water, and up among the foothills of the main range, when naviga- ble rivers have been left behind, travelling through the forest resolves itself into a trudge up the valleys of successive streams, varied by occasional scrambles over ridges of hill or spurs of mountain which divide one river system from another. Often the bed of the river itself is the only available path, but as wading is a very fatiguing business, if unduly prolonged, the banks are resorted to wherever a game-track or the thinning out of the underwood renders progress along them practicable.

The Sakai fugitives, however, did not dare to sel foot upon the land when once they had quitted their camp, for their solitary chance of throwing pursuers off their track lay in leaving no trace behind them of the direction which they had followed. Accord- ingly they began by walking up the bed of the little brawling torrent, swollen and muddy from the rains of the previous afternoon, and when presently its point of junction with a tributary stream was reached, they waded up the latter because of the two it seemed to be the less likely to be selected. It was miserable work, for the water was icy cold, and the rivulet's course was strewn with ragged rocks and hampered by fallen timber; but the Sakai seened to melt through all obstructions, so swift and noiseless was their going. They crept through incredibly nar- row places; they scrambled over piles of rotten tim- her without disturbing a twig or apparently leaving a trace: and they kept strictly to the bed of the