As soon as we were on the road again I began to watch for a chance to escape without being noticed, and it was not very long before an opportunity occurred. At a part of the road where the forest was densest, two gigantic trees had fallen across one another so that the way was completely stopped. When I came in sight of the obstruction, Annan had already climbed to the top, and as he stood up preparatory to helping one of the carriers to ascend, he sank in up to the middle of his thighs, for the tree had been eaten out by the white ants until it was a mere spongy mass of tinder. I set my trunk down on the path and waited while the carriers laboriously climbed up the rotten barrier and hauled their loads up with the aid of those below, and I watched them hand the burdens down on the other side; and, when the last of them had leaped down without a glance in my direction, I clambered up half-way and peered over at them. The path ran straight ahead for some distance and they hurried along it without looking back; presently they came to a bend in the road, and, one by one, passed out of sight; and as the last man vanished, I jumped down and addressed myself to my task. In a moment I had the trunk open and the bundle out on the road. I rummaged hastily among the other contents, but found nothing worth taking with me but an old woollen shawl, so, closing the trunk again, I locked it and twisted the key off in the lock, and then, catching up the bundle and the shawl, started back along the path at a run. A little distance back I had noticed what appeared to be a faint track leading into the forest, and I now ran back until I reached this track, and, having found it, turned down it and ran as fast as the dense undergrowth would let me. I was surprised to find that it grew more distinct as I went on and it presently became quite a well-defined path. When I had run along it for some ten minutes, I turned off into the forest and pushed through the undergrowth until I was stopped by the great buttressed roots of an immense silk-cotton tree which towered up above me like some monumental column. In the angle between two of these buttresses I laid down the bundle, and, with my clasp knife, quickly ripped open the stitching and exposed my treasures to view. The first thing to do was to shave, for, when I decided to make the journey, I had begun to let my beard grow, and it was now an inch and a half long and very stubbly. I had in the bundle one of those little folding pocket mirrors that are so extensively sold to the natives in West Africa, which I fixed to the tree by sticking my knife through the wire loop; and then taking my razor, mowed away at the dry stubble until the tears ran down my cheeks. But the next operation was worse, for my hair had to come off too, and, by the time I had got my scalp bare, my bald blue pate was covered with scratches and smeared with blood.