Father Friday stopped. "Does it not seem to you that we are merely
going round and round, Tom?" he asked.
I assented gloomily.
"Have you a compass?"
I shook my head.
"Nor have I," he added. "I did not think of bringing one, being so
sure of the way. How could we have turned from it so inadvertently?
Well, we must calculate by the sun. The point for which we are bound
is in a southerly direction."
Having taken our bearings, we retraced our steps a short distance, then
pushed forward for an hour or more, without coming out upon the
bridle-path which we expected to find. Another hour passed; the sun
was getting high. Father Friday paused again.
"What time is it?" he inquired.
I looked at the little silver watch my mother gave me when I left home.
"Nine o'clock!" I answered, with a start.
"How unfortunate!" he exclaimed. "There is now no use in pressing on
farther. We should arrive too late at our destination. We may as well
rest a little, and then try to find our way home. It is unaccountable
that I should have missed the way so stupidly."
But it was one thing to order a retreat, as we soldiers would call it,
and quite another to go back by the route we had come.
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