My plans, which had been nearly complete for my own escape, became immediately most uncertain and scattered. It was not a matter now merely of stocking the boat, securing my weapons and then proceeding down the outflowing river, but of bearding the Blacks in their stronghold, seeing this man and getting him away. Then would come the running of the gauntlet past their camp on the river. The first proposition, that of entering this village of the hostile Links and interviewing my “partner,” loomed up, unsolved, for careful consideration. That the fellows were keenly on the lookout, I had demonstrated fully; they had seen me and sounded the alarm in a style truly masterful if not admirable. That they thirsted somewhat for my unwilling gore, I had precious small reason to doubt. If I got away with their captive and the demons discovered who it was that engineered the feat, there would be a warm jungle-region all about the lake. How much could I count on the man I meant to assist? Not a great deal, I feared, for he was probably incapacitated in some important manner. However, he had doubtless superintended the hammering down of those stakes I had seen in the river, which evidently meant some sort of fishing operations, so that perhaps, after all, he was more inventive than I had previously supposed. All the way up the lake, I racked my brain for a suitable plan for invading the enemy’s camp. There were wild ideas in plenty, but no one of these was practical or even worthy of a moment’s consideration. I gave up thinking, when at last the boat was secured on the beach, knowing how far away my thoughts would be driven by the welcome of the Links. All through my dinner, however, even with little Tike in my arms and Fatty languishing about my feet, I was lost in pondering over the doings of the day. That night, although I was weary, I tossed and rolled uneasily, catching but snatches of sleep between the spells of being vividly awake over my new discoveries and their attendant problems. Time after time I awoke with a start, thinking I had solved the difficulty, only to realise that my brain was indulging in the most fantastic of workings. My whole being was dominated and occupied by this scheme of uniting with that human prisoner on the river. Sometime in the earliest hours of morning I sat up abruptly, having been tortured by a sort of nightmare in which there was an inextricable tangle of Links, alligators and bears. As before, this was intimately connected with the man whom I intended to rescue from the Blacks, but this time I got an idea out of the chaos and it fairly made me twitch, so galvanically did it grip my whole nervous system. I would visit the hostile camp in safety, because I would go as a bear.