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Every one now wished to go home. It was much hotter there than in natural fields. It made you want to tear all your clothes off and play at savages, instead of keeping respectable in your boots.

But we had to bear the boots because it was so brambly.

It was Oswald who showed the others how flat it would be to go home the same way we came; and he pointed out the telegraph wires in the distance and said:

“There must be a road there, let’s make for it,” which was quite a simple and ordinary thing to say, and he does not ask for any credit for it.

So we sloshed along, scratching our legs with the brambles, and the water squelched in our boots, and Alice’s blue muslin frock was torn all over in these criss-cross tears which are considered so hard to darn.

We did not follow the stream any more. It was only a trickle now, so we knew we had tracked it to its source. And we got hotter and hotter and hotter, and the dews of agony stood in beads on our brows and rolled down our noses and off our chins. And the flies buzzed and the gnats stung, and Oswald bravely sought to keep up Dicky’s courage, when he tripped on a snag and came down on a bramble-bush, by saying:

” You see it is the source of the Nile we’ve discovered. What price north poles now?”

Alice said, “Ah, but think of ices! I expect Oswald wishes it had been the pole, anyway–“

Oswald is naturally the leader, especially when following up what is his own idea, but he knows that leaders have other duties besides just leading. One is to assist weak or wounded members of the expedition, whether polar or equatorish.

So the others had got a bit ahead through Oswald lending the tottering Denny a hand over the rough places. Denny’s feet hurt him, because when he was a beaver his stockings had dropped out of his pocket, and boots without stockings are not a bed of luxuriousness. And he is often unlucky with his feet.

Presently we came to a pond, and Denny said:

“Let’s paddle.”

Oswald likes Denny to have ideas; he knows it is healthy for the boy, and generally he backs him up, but just now it was getting late and the others were ahead, so he said:

“Oh, rot! come on.”

Generally the Dentist would have; but even worms will turn if they are hot enough, and if their feet are hurting them.

“I don’t care, I shall!” he said.

Oswald overlooked the mutiny and did not say who was leader. He just said:

“Well, don’t be all day about it,” for he is a kind-hearted boy and can make allowances.

So Denny took off his boots and went into the pool.

“Oh, it’s ripping!” he said. “You ought to come in.”

“It looks beastly muddy,” said his tolerating leader.

“It is a bit,” Denny said, “but the mud’s just as cool as the water, and so soft it squeezes between your toes quite different to boots.”

And so he splashed about, and kept asking Oswald to come along in.

But some unseen influence prevented Oswald doing this; or it may have been because both his bootlaces were in hard knots.

Oswald had cause to bless the unseen influence, or the bootlaces, or whatever it was.

Denny had got to the middle of the pool, and he was splashing about and getting his clothes very wet indeed, and altogether you would have thought his was a most envious and happy state. But alas! the brightest cloud has a waterproof lining. He was just saying:

“You are a silly, Oswald. You’d much better–” when he gave a blood-piercing scream, and began to kick about.

“What’s up?” cried the ready Oswald; he feared the worst from the way Denny screamed, but he knew it could not be an old meat tin in this quiet and jungular spot, like it was in the moat when the shark bit Dora.