I had also tried to teach the new chums some simple facts in bushcraft. The country here swarmed with feathered game: partridges, pheasants, and guinea-fowls. It was my custom to walk on before the train of waggons, on the trek, with my gun, and shoot plenty of these birds sunning themselves on the road. One evening when the men were inspanning, a very noisy job when you have eighteen waggons, I took my gun and strolled along as usual. The road was about thirty yards broad, and well-defined, the wide river running some one hundred yards on the right-hand side of it. I had progressed about two hundred yards from the outspan, but was still well within earshot and sight of it, when I saw the man I have mentioned come rushing through the trees and thorn bushes, down the slope on the left-hand side of the road. At first I thought he had gone mad, and so, for a time, he was. He had lost his hat, his khaki clothes were torn to rags, his face worked convulsively, with his eyes bulging out of his head, while the perspiration ran down him in streams. He reached the road within a yard or two of me; but he neither saw me, the road, nor the river in front of him. I jumped forward and seized him, saying: "What's the matter with you? What are you doing here?" He struggled for a moment, as if to try and break away; then some expression came into his face, and he gasped out: "Oh, thank God, major, you have found me. I knew you would look for me." [Illustration: BUSH TRACK.] [Illustration: PUNGA (TREE FERN).] "Look for you?" I said. "Why, what's gone wrong with you?" "Oh, sir," he cried--and, strong man as he was, he shook with fear--"I'm lost in the bush." "Lost in the bush?" I said. "What do you mean? Don't you see you are on the road? Don't you see the waggons? Don't you hear the row the boys are making inspanning, or see the river in front of you?" "I do now, sir; but I saw nothing, and heard nothing, when you caught hold of me. Oh, thank God you found me."