Jerry did not even wait to finish his sentence, but started off on a lope.

But the gloom under the heavy timber increased.  He found difficulty in telling the points of the compass.  And finally it became absolutely impossible for him to make more than a half-way decent guess as to the quarter where the camp in all probability lay.

“I suppose I’m just about lost,” he at length reluctantly admitted.

Still, Jerry was not one to be easily daunted.  He had been in situations before now that called for a show of manliness and courage, and rather prided himself on being equal to any such occasion.

The thunder was booming heavily, and the rain ready to descend.  He believed he could hear a distant roaring.  It might be wind tearing through the forest, or a heavy fall of rain, perhaps both.  At any rate it would mark the breaking of the storm.

“Better be finding that hollow tree I spoke to Jesse about,” he concluded.

Once again luck favored the lad.  Not thirty paces away he discovered what seemed to be a big stump, about twelve feet or more in height.  It had an opening at the bottom, large enough for him to crawl through; indeed, to his mind, it was there especially for the very use he intended to put it.

Running forward just as the rain began to rattle down all around him, Jerry proceeded to crawl through the aperture.  He found the interior amply large enough to give him the needed shelter.  What was better, the opening happened to be on the leeward side, so that the driving rain could not find entrance.

“This is what I call a bully fit.  Talk to me about your cyclone cellars, what could beat such a cozy den as this?  I’m as snug as a bug in a rug.  Four wild dogs and my first deer, all in one day.  I guess that’s my top-notch record, all right.  Let her storm all she wants, so long as the lightning doesn’t take a notion to strike this blessed old stump,” he was saying as he mentally shook hands with himself over the day’s achievements.

After a long time, hours it seemed to Jerry, during a temporary lull in the howling of the gale, he ventured to peep forth.

Everything was pitch black around, save when the lightning zigzagged through space, and lighted up all creation with its electric torch.

“Looks like an all-night stand for Jerry.  There comes that wind tearing things loose again.  Wow! it was a big tree went down that time!  Hope none of them take a notion to knock my poor old stump flat, or I’d be squashed into a pancake.”

Like many other people, Jerry had a habit of talking to himself under stress of excitement Perhaps he believed that in this way he bolstered up his courage, just as some men whistle when they find themselves trembling in the face of some uncanny peril.

And there he crouched while the gale blew with renewed violence, and the night wore slowly on.  Several times there came a lull, and he began to hope the worst had passed; when once again the wind would swoop down, as though loth to give up its riotous dominion over the stricken forest.