But stronger than these were memory of the girl's urging voice, the vague thrill of the cloth still about his neck, and the freshness of Jolly Roger's trail as it kept straight on through the forest's moonlit corridors and caverns of gloom.
It was in the first graying light of July dawn that Peter dragged himself up the rough side of a ridge and looked down into a narrow strip of plain on the other side.

Just as Nada had given up in weakness and despair, so now he was almost ready to quit.

He had traveled miles since the owl fight, and his wounds had stiffened, and with every step gave him excruciating pain.

His injured eye was entirely closed, and there was a strange, dull ache in the back of his head, where Gargantua had pounded him with his beak.

The strip of valley, half hidden in its silvery mist of dawn, seemed a long distance away to Peter, and he dropped on his belly and began to lick his raw shoulder with a feverish tongue.