Part 4 (1/2)

He had ”blazed” ever so many boughs of the hedges with the hatchet, or his knife if he had not got the hatchet with him, to recognise his route through the woods. When he found a nest begun or finished, and waiting for the egg, he used to cut a ”blaze”--that is, to peel off the bark--or make a notch, or cut a bough off about three yards from the place, so that he might easily return to it, though hidden with foliage. No doubt the gra.s.s had a secret of this kind, and could tell him which was the way, and which was the north and south if he searched long enough.

So the raft being an old story now, as he had had it a day, Bevis went out into the field, looking very carefully down into the gra.s.s. Just by the path there were many plantains, but their long, narrow leaves did not point in any particular direction, no two plants had their leaves parallel. The blue scabious had no leaves to speak of, nor had the red knapweed, nor the yellow rattle, nor the white moon-daisies, nor golden b.u.t.tercups, nor red sorrel. There were stalks and flowers, but the plants of the mowing-gra.s.s, in which he had no business to be walking, had very little leaf. He tried to see if the flowers turned more one way than the other, or bowed their heads to the north, as men seem to do, taking that pole as their guide, but none did so. They leaned in any direction, as the wind had left them, or as the sun happened to be when they burst their green bonds and came forth to the light.

The wind came past as he looked and stroked everything the way it went, shaking white pollen from the bluish tops of the tall gra.s.ses. The wind went on and left him and the gra.s.ses to themselves. How should I knew which was the north or the south or the west from these? Bevis asked himself, without framing any words to his question. There was no knowing. Then he walked to the hedge to see if the moss grew more on one side of the elms than the other, or if the bark was thicker and rougher.

After he had looked at twenty trees he could not see much difference; those in the hedge had the moss thickest on the eastern side (he knew which was east very well himself, and wanted to see if the moss knew), and those in the lane just through it had the moss thickest on their western side, which was clearly because of the shadow. The trees were really in a double row, running north and south, and the coolest shadow was in between them, and so the moss grew there most. Nor were the boughs any longer or bigger any side more than the other, it varied as the tree was closely surrounded with other trees, for each tree repelled its neighbour. None of the trees, nor the moss, nor gra.s.ses cared anything at all about north or south.

Bevis sat down in the mowing-gra.s.s, though he knew the Bailiff would have been angry at such a hole being made in it; and when he was sitting on the ground it rose as high as his head. He could see nothing but the sky, and while he sat there looking up he saw that the clouds all drifted one way, towards his house. Presently a starling came past, also flying straight for the house, and after a while another. Next three bees went over as straight as a line, all going one after another that way. The bees went because they had gathered as much honey as they could carry, and were hastening home without looking to the right or to the left. The starlings went because they had young in their nests in a hole of the roof by the chimney, and they had found some food for their fledglings. So now he could find his way home across the pathless prairie by going the same way as the clouds, the bees, and the starlings.

But when he had reached home he recollected that he ought to know the lat.i.tude, and that there were Arabs or some other people in Africa who found out the lat.i.tude of the place they were in by gazing at the sun through a tube. Bevis considered a little, and then went to the rick-yard, where there was a large elder bush, and cut a straight branch between the knots with his knife. He peeled it, and then forced out the pith, and thus made a tube. Next he took a thin board, and scratched a circle on it with the point of the compa.s.ses, and divided it into degrees. Round the tube he bent a piece of wire, and put the ends through a gimlet-hole in the centre of the board. The ends were opened apart, so as to fasten the tube to the board, allowing it to rotate round the circle. Two gimlet-holes were bored at the top corners of the board, and string pa.s.sed through so that the instrument could be attached to a tree or post.

He was tying it to one of the young walnut-trees as an upright against which to work his astrolabe, when Mark arrived, and everything had to be explained to him. After they had glanced through the tube, and decided that the raft was at least ten degrees distant, it was clearly of no use to go to it to-day, as they could not reach it under a week's travel.

The best thing, Mark thought, would be to continue their expedition in some other direction.

”Let's go round the Longpond,” said Bevis; ”we have never been quite round it.”

”So we will,” said Mark. ”But we shall not be back to dinner.”

”As if travellers ever thought of dinner! Of course we shall take our provisions with us.”

”Let's go and get our spears,” said Mark.

”Let's take Pan,” said Bevis.

”Where is your old compa.s.s?” said Mark.

”O, I know--and I must make a map; wait a minute. We ought to have a medicine-chest; the savages will worry us for physic: and very likely we shall have dreadful fevers.”

”So we shall, of course; but perhaps there are wonderful plants to cure us, and we know them and the savages don't--there's sorrel.”

”Of course, and we can nibble some hawthorn leaf.”

”Or a stalk of wheat.”

”Or some watercress.”

”Or some nuts.”

”No, certainly not; they're not ripe,” said Bevis, ”and unripe fruit is very dangerous in tropical countries.”

”We ought to keep a diary,” said Mark. ”When we go to sleep who shall watch first, you or I?”

”We'll light a fire,” said Bevis. ”That will frighten the lions; they will glare at us, but they can't stand fire--you hit them on the head with a burning stick.”

So they went in, and loaded their pockets with huge double slices of bread-and-b.u.t.ter done up in paper, apples, and the leg of a roast duck from the pantry. Then came the compa.s.s, an old one in a bra.s.s case; Mark broke his nails opening the case, which was tarnished, and the card at once swung round to the north, pointing to the elms across the road from the window of the sitting-room. Bevis took the bow and three arrows, made of the young wands of hazel which grow straight, and Mark was armed with a spear, a long ash rod with sharpened end, which they thrust in the kitchen fire a few minutes to harden in the proper manner.

Besides which, there was Bevis's pocket-book for the diary, and a large sheet of brown paper for the map; you see travellers have not always everything at command, but must make use of what they have. Pan raced before them up the footpath; the gate that led to the Longpond was locked, and too high to be climbed easily, but they knew a gap, and crept through on hands and knees.

”Take care there are no cobras or rattlesnakes among those dead leaves,”

said Mark, when they were halfway through, and quite over-arched and hidden under brambles.