Whether he knew that for a thousand miles it rolled its course through forest, whether he even knew that it was there at all; what his plans were, or whether he lived from day to day like a man whose days are numbered he never told his men.  Nor can I get an indication on this point from the talk that I hear from sailors in their cups in a certain tavern I know of.  His face was expressionless, his mouth shut, and he held his ship to her course.  That evening they were up to the edge of the tree trunks and the Arabs camped and waited ten knots astern and the wind had sunk a little.

There Shard anchored a little before sunset and landed at once.  At first he explored the forest a little on foot.  Then he sent for Spanish Dick.  They had slung the cutter on board some days ago when they found she could not keep up.  Shard could not ride but he sent for Spanish Dick and told him he must take him as a passenger.  So Spanish Dick slung him in front of the saddle “before the mast” as Shard called it, for they still carried a mast on the front of the saddle, and away they galloped together.  “Rough weather,” said Shard, but he surveyed the forest as he went and the long and short of it was he found a place where the forest was less than half a mile thick and the Desperate Lark might get through:  but twenty trees must be cut.  Shard marked the trees himself, sent Spanish Dick right back to watch the Arabs and turned the whole of his crew on to those twenty trees.  It was a frightful risk, the Desperate Lark was empty, with an enemy no more than ten knots astern, but it was a moment for bold measures and Shard took the chance of being left without his ship in the heart of Africa in the hope of being repaid by escaping altogether.

The men worked all night on those twenty trees, those that had no axes bored with bradawls and blasted, and then relieved those that had.

Shard was indefatigable, he went from tree to tree showing exactly what way every one was to fall, and what was to be done with them when they were down.  Some had to be cut down because their branches would get in the way of the masts, others because their trunks would be in the way of the wheels; in the case of the last the stumps had to be made smooth and low with saws and perhaps a bit of the trunk sawn off and rolled away.  This was the hardest work they had.  And they were all large trees, on the other hand had they been small there would have been many more of them and they could not have sailed in and out, sometimes for hundreds of yards, without cutting any at all:  and all this Shard calculated on doing if only there was time.

The light before dawn came and it looked as if they would never do it at all.  And then dawn came and it was all done but one tree, the hard part of the work had all been done in the night and a sort of final rush cleared everything up except that one huge tree.  And then the cutter signalled the Arabs were moving.  At dawn they had prayed, and now they had struck their camp.  Shard at once ordered all his men to the ship except ten whom he left at the tree, they had some way to go and the Arabs had been moving some ten minutes before they got there.  Shard took in the cutter which wasted five minutes, hoisted sail short-handed and that took five minutes more, and slowly got under way.