But on resuming his course, Phil saw that if he hoped to make any real progress, he must divest himself of all useless encumbrances. His basket and his fishing-rod were of this description. He therefore sacrificed both of them to the necessities of the occasion; but before he threw them down, he removed the hook and line from the rod, so as to have it in case of need. And now, as he went on, he felt the benefit of this disencumbrance; for the weight and inconvenience of these had been excessively troublesome all along. Yet the line and hook were the only essential part of the rod, and the sandwich was the only necessary part of the basket; and these things were carried far more conveniently in his pocket. The brook flowed on, and gradually increased in volume by the occasional addition of other brooklets, which joined it in its course. The channel grew broader, and the waters grew more abundant, sometimes spreading themselves out wide over a pebbly bottom, at other times collecting into deep pools, which Phil preferred avoiding. In spite of the irregularities and inequalities of its course, Phil preferred walking here to wandering at random through the woods; in the first place, on account of the reasons above mentioned; and in the second place, for the reason that it led to some definite point, and would not allow him to wander about blindly in a circle. The hopeless bewilderment which had resulted from his forest wanderings on the previous day, made his present course seem quite certain and definite in comparison. At last, to Phil’s great delight, the brook joined another brook, which was fully twice as large, though not as large as that stream where he had been fishing. A vague hope had arisen in his mind that this brook might lead him to that very stream, in which case he counted confidently on finding his friends; but now he had walked so far that he gave up this hope altogether, and had made up his mind to seek his own safety, irrespective of his friends. The new brook was quite as easy as the old one; in fact, it was somewhat more so, for it was less irregular, and presented fewer inequalities of depths. Over its bed, then, Phil trudged on, sometimes stopping to dash water over his face and head, at other times thrusting in his hands, and occasionally bending down to take a drink. The presence of the brook thus proved of the greatest advantage to him, and its cool waters prevented him from feeling that exhaustion under which he might otherwise have sunk utterly. In the broader pathway that this brook afforded, he had also the chance of gaining advantage of any slight breeze or movement of the air that might take place; and thus in every way he was a gainer.