You remain till the last and see them all before you. You quite
understand? When each man comes up to the one in front of him he is to
stop until the next man joins him, and then move on to the man ahead."
"I understand, sir."
"They must not be in a hurry, sergeant; because moving ahead as I
shall, I shall have to move to the right or left sometimes so as to
make as sure as I can that I am still going down. Now, Mr. Fitzgibbon,
if you keep with me, between us we ought to find the road."
The plan seemed a good one, but it was difficult to follow. The fall
of the ground was so slight that Ralph and the officer often differed
as to whether they were going up or down, and it was only by
separating and taking short runs right and left, forward or backward,
that they arrived at any conclusion, and even then often doubted
whether they were right. The shouting as the long line proceeded was
prodigious, and must have astonished any stray animals that might have
been grazing among the hills. So bewildering was the fog that the men
sometimes went back to the men behind them instead of forward to the
men in front, and long pauses were necessitated before they got right
again. Ralph, finding the cause of the delays, passed the word down
for the first man to keep on shouting "number one," the second "number
two," and so on, and this facilitated matters.
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