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The man did as he was bid and the instant that his eyes were turned away,
Tarzan slipped from the tent. An hour later he was outside the German camp and
headed for the little hill town of Wilhelmstal, the summer seat of government of
German East Africa.
Fraulein Bertha Kircher was lost. She was humiliated and angry--it was long
before she would admit it, that she, who prided herself upon her woodcraft, was
lost in this little patch of country between the Pangani and the Tanga railway.
She knew that Wilhelmstal lay southeast of her about fifty miles; but, through a
combination of untoward circumstances, she found herself unable to determine
which was southeast.
In the first place she had set out from German headquarters on a well-marked
road that was being traveled by troops and with every reason to believe that she
would follow that road to Wilhelmstal. Later she had been warned from this road
by word that a strong British patrol had come down the west bank of the
Pangani, effected a crossing south of her, and was even then marching on the
railway at Tonda.
After leaving the road she found herself in thick bush and as the sky was heavily
overcast she presently had recourse to her compass and it was not until then that
she discovered to her dismay that she did not have it with her. So sure was she of
her woodcraft, however, that she continued on in the direction she thought west
until she had covered sufficient distance to warrant her in feeling assured that,
by now turning south, she could pass safely in rear of the British patrol.
Nor did she commence to feel any doubts until long after she had again turned
toward the east well south, as she thought, of the patrol. It was late afternoon--
she should long since have struck the road again south of Tonda; but she had
found no road and now she began to feel real anxiety.
Her horse had traveled all day without food or water, night was approaching and
with it a realization that she was hopelessly lost in a wild and trackless country
notorious principally for its tsetse flies and savage beasts. It was maddening to
know that she had absolutely no knowledge of the direction she was traveling--
that she might be forging steadily further from the railway, deeper into the
gloomy and forbidding country toward the Pangani; yet it was impossible to stop-
she must go on.
Bertha Kircher was no coward, whatever else she may have been, but as night
began to close down around her she could not shut out from her mind entirely
contemplation of the terrors of the long hours ahead before the rising sun should
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