That fall committed me, too.  Within five minutes of my first introduction to the macchia I had learnt how easily a man may be lost in it; and in less than half of five minutes I had lost not only my way but my temper.  To pursue after the hogs was nearly hopeless:  all sound of them was swallowed up in the tangle of scrub.  Yet I held on, crawling through thickets of lentisk, tangling my legs in creepers, pushing my head into clumps of cactus, here tearing my hands and boots on sharp granite, there ripping my clothes on prickly thorns.  Once I found what appeared to be a goat-track.  It led to another cleft of rock, where, beating down the briers, I looked down a chasm which ended, thirty feet below, in a whole brake of cacti.  The scent of the crushed plants was divine:  and I crushed a plenty of them.

After a struggle which must have lasted from twenty minutes to half an hour, I gained the ridge which had seemed but three minutes away, and there sat down to a silent lesson in geography.  I had given up all hope of following the hogs or discovering my comrades.  I knew now what it means to search for a needle in a bottle of hay, but with many prickles I had gathered some wisdom, and learnt that, whether I decided to go forward or to retreat, I must survey the macchia before attempting it again.

To go forward without a clue would be folly, as well as unfair to my father, whom my two shots must have alarmed.  I decided therefore to retreat, but first to mount a craggy pile of granite some fifty yards on my left, which would give me not only a better survey of the bush, but perhaps even a view over the tree-tops and down upon the bay where the Gauntlet lay at anchor.  If so, by the movements on board I might learn whether or not my father had reached her with his commands before taking my alarm.

The crags were not easy to climb:  but, having hitched the musket in my bandolier, I could use both hands, and so pulled myself up by the creepers which festooned the rock here and there in swags as thick as the Gauntlet’s hawser.  Disappointment met me on the summit.  The trees allowed me but sight of the blue horizon; they still hid the shores of the bay and our anchorage.  My eminence, however, showed me a track, fairly well defined, crossing the macchia and leading back to the wood.

I was conning this when a shout in my rear fetched me right-about face.  Towards me, down and across the farther ridge I saw a man running—­Nat Fiennes!

He had caught sight of me on my rock against the skyline, and as he ran he waved his arms frantically, motioning to me to run also for the woods.  I could see no pursuer; but still, as he came on, his arms waved, and were waving yet when a bush on the chine above him threw out a little puff of grey smoke.  Toppling headlong into the bushes he was lost to me even before the report rang on my ears across the hollow.