They camped that night without food or fire, in a rain that came down harder than ever, if such a thing could be. Next day, without breakfast, they resumed their dogged advance, halting often to rest and search for food. But in that dead season the forest yielded nothing more edible than leaves and bark, and a few woody seed pods like rose-haws in size and shape.
"Hell-apples," Sullivan named those, after he had had opportunity to observe their effects. "They look all right, and they taste all right," he explained, "but they sure do raise hell with your insides."
The men munched them greedily, despite their uncomforting properties. A time was coming when a rotting log that harbored store of grubs would seem a treasure-house to them.
The bayonets did not hack out a trail as rapidly as they had on the day before, and they had made no more than three miles and a half when night shut down. Yet, slow as the advance was, only half a dozen men were up with it, and, when Burrell would have gone back for the others, his wounded leg crumpled under him. Without a word, Lieutenant Roberts joined Sullivan, and it was midnight when the pair brought in the last straggler they could find. Three were still missing, and the Captain forbade further search. "They'll have to take a chance," he said. "H'm."
When the next day broke, merely a lightening of the gloom under the dripping branches, Lieutenant Roberts rose stiffly from the pool that had formed about him in the night and stood, blue-lipped and shaking, over the Captain, whose tortured leg would not permit him to do more than raise himself on one elbow. The two officers faced the situation together. They needed no words. All about them lay the forest of that deadly central valley. Somewhere beyond it, unattainably far for the majority of the men, rose the western rampart of the island. For thirty-six hours they had had no food but hell-apples, the fever was growing on them, and three-fourths of the command, any doctor would have said, could not march a mile.
The Captain spoke at last, staring sullenly at the ground. "Call the men, will you?" he asked. "H'm. I reckon it's time to split."
Roberts' face brightened. "I'll make it out all right," he declared. "Never felt huskier in my life. I could break world's records from here to a plate of grub."