There was no point in wasting time. We were cold, we were hungry...and we had a limited time in front of us before we were no longer capable of following any plan, however ill formed and crazy. The idea—mine—was to double back in a long arc which would take us around Leander to the seashore north of the port. Then under cover of the next night’s darkness, we would sneak back into the inhabited area just far enough to find and appropriate a rowboat. We would then row to the island and set about trying to locate Nathan or learn whatever there was to be learned by careful eavesdropping. We had no cards up our sleeves...our final recourse was simply surrender. Laboriously, we climbed the long slope at whose foot we had hid out for the night. We were hoping that at the top we might find a vantage point from which we could see the whole extent of the territory we had to cross, and thus identify an easy route across it. I didn’t expect that there would be any organized pursuit or search.
