She was utterly and completely lost! Whether the trail to Sephar was to the east or west of where she now stood was as unknown to her as the opposite side of Uda, the moon. True her goal lay to the north; but unless she could locate the original path Jotan had followed, she might spend the rest of her life picking a way through the towering mountains and endless plains between. Surging panic cut her legs from under her and she dropped into a sitting position on a fallen log and buried her face in her hands. For a long time she sat thus, fighting back her tears, trying to think logically. But what use was logic in this tangled wilderness of growing things? Still, she told herself, she could not sit there forever, an unresisting morsel for the first meat-eater to come along. She stood up, brushed away an accumulation of leaves, thorns and dirt from her tunic, and struck resolutely out toward the east, pushing her way slowly through the walls of plant life everywhere about her. Monkeys raced and chattered among the branches overhead and disturbed rodents and the crawling things that infest the rotting jungle floor fled from her path. After a dozen yards she was bathed in perspiration and her skin seemed to crawl with the dampness. If only she could find some sort of pathway that would allow her to make progress without battling this ocean of pulpy, slimy vegetation--a footing solid enough to prevent sinking to her ankles with every step. Three different times she narrowly avoided treading on snakes--small, brightly colored reptiles whose bite would have meant a lingering death; and once she nearly collapsed with fright when a looping vine caught her about the neck unexpectedly and she thought it the folds of a python. And then, after an hour of this, she stumbled unexpectedly into an elephant path, its powdery surface marked by the passage of numerous other animals. Unfortunately for her purpose it ran almost east and west instead of north and after following it into the east for the better part of two hours, it began gradually to veer southward, taking her further and further from the caves of her father. Her only hope was that sooner or later she would come upon an intersecting trail that would lead northward. The thought of leaving the narrow strip of open ground and plunging back into that green maze was more than she could endure. And so she went on, staggering now and then under the lashes of heat and weariness, finding an occasional waterhole to quench her thirst and stripping fruit from trees and bushes to satisfy hunger. Near nightfall she came upon a large clearing through which flowed a wide shallow stream. It had been several hours since last water had passed her lips and sight of the river lifted her spirits. She pushed her way through a heavy growth of reeds on the near bank, knelt and drank thirstily, then slipped out of her tunic and submerged her entire body in the brackish liquid.