When the Doctor stopped speaking and sat down, all the monkeys clapped their hands a long time and said to one another, “Let it be remembered always among our people that he sat and ate with us, here, under the trees. For surely he is the Greatest of Men!” And the Grand Gorilla, who had the strength of seven horses in his hairy arms, rolled a great rock up to the head of the table and said, “This stone for all time shall mark the spot.” And even to this day, in the heart of the jungle, that stone still is there. And monkey-mothers, passing through the forest with their families, still point down at it from the branches and whisper to their children, “Sh! There it is—look—where the Good White Man sat and ate food with us in the Year of the Great Sickness!” Then, when the party was over, the Doctor and his pets started out to go back to the seashore. And all the monkeys went with him as far as the edge of their country, carrying his trunk and bags, to see him off. _THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER_ THE BLACK PRINCE BY the edge of the river they stopped and said farewell. This took a long time, because all those thousands of monkeys wanted to shake John Dolittle by the hand. Afterwards, when the Doctor and his pets were going on alone, Polynesia said, “We must tread softly and talk low as we go through the land of the Jolliginki. If the King should hear us, he will send his soldiers to catch us again; for I am sure he is still very angry over the trick I played on him.” “What I am wondering,” said the Doctor, “is where we are going to get another boat to go home in.... Oh well, perhaps we’ll find one lying about on the beach that nobody is using. ‘Never lift your foot till you come to the stile.’” One day, while they were passing through a very thick part of the forest, Chee-Chee went ahead of them to look for cocoanuts. And while he was away, the Doctor and the rest of the animals, who did not know the jungle-paths so well, got lost in the deep woods. They wandered around and around but could not find their way down to the seashore. Chee-Chee, when he could not see them anywhere, was terribly upset. He climbed high trees and looked out from the top branches to try and see the Doctor’s high hat; he waved and shouted; he called to all the animals by name. But it was no use. They seemed to have disappeared altogether. Indeed they had lost their way very badly. They had strayed a long way off the path, and the jungle was so thick with bushes and creepers and vines that sometimes they could hardly move at all, and the Doctor had to take out his pocket-knife and cut his way along. They stumbled into wet, boggy places; they got all tangled up in thick convolvulus-runners; they scratched themselves on thorns, and twice they nearly lost the medicine-bag in the under-brush. There seemed no end to their troubles; and nowhere could they come upon a path.