What could be done? There was no time for making experiments; if the attempt at eluding the Manchu did not succeed at once, it would fail miserably and entirely. Bob looked anxiously around. For some distance the path had led over loose, rocky ground, alternating with small copses of hill trees where the rainfall had washed the soil into hollows. The copse nearest to the spot on which he now stood was a ragged clump of stunted pines, which in the late Manchurian spring had scarcely begun to show signs of new growth. In any case it would prove an insecure place of hiding, for it would be instantly searched by his pursuers. But half a mile farther on he spied a narrow watercourse zigzagging almost at right angles to the track. It was a mountain stream which had been so swollen by the frost and rains that it had cut a bed some feet deep in the face of the hill. Except where it crossed the path it was concealed by the shelving bank. As Bob’s eyes fell upon it, a sudden idea struck him. Hurrying his pace, he led the way towards it, and found that on the other side was a stretch of damp, mossy ground, leading up to an irregular group of rocks somewhat to the left of the path. These rocks were the lower fringe of a vast extent of broken country—a country of large boulders separated by narrow, tortuous fissures. Without telling his companions what was in his mind, he waded through the stream, the water of which was still icy cold, and stepped on to the wet, oozing ground. The two Chinamen followed him; the footsteps of the three left deep prints in the moss, filled instantly by water. They gained the rocks beyond; then Bob, instead of pursuing the same course, which would have been among the inhospitable boulders, turned sharp to the left, and describing a rough semicircle came back to the stream. His followers tramped along behind him, saying never a word, wondering what his purpose was, and confident that this doubling on their track was not without some important end in view. Along the bed of the stream, the water rising almost to his knees, he made his way as rapidly as possible, crossed his former path, and continued his march for some hundred and fifty yards beyond, till he came to a spot where the bank on the right was low, scarcely above the level of the water. There he left the stream, and wading through a small swamp, bore continually to the right until he arrived almost at the path again, more than a hundred yards from the stream. He had thus made a complete circuit, and come to a point where the hillside rose steeply above the path and was strewn with several fallen trees uprooted or overthrown by the previous autumn’s storms. Creeping forward with great caution under cover of the prostrate trunks and of the few standing trees which the elements had spared, the little party came to a spot almost immediately over the path, but completely screened from the sight of anyone below. There they lay in cold silence and waited.