We can sleep as securely as if were in our camp." So saying, Malchus chose a comfortable place, and was soon asleep.
Nessus, however, did not lie down, but sat watching with unwearied eyes the entrance to the cave.

As soon as day had fairly broken, a chorus of loud shouts and yells far down the ravine told that the search had begun.

For hours it continued.

Every bush and boulder in the bottom was searched by the natives.
Again and again they went up and down the gorge, convinced that the fugitives must be hidden somewhere; for, as Nessus had anticipated, the cliffs at the upper end were so precipitous that an escape there was impossible, and the natives had kept so close a watch all night along the slopes at the lower end, and at the mouth, that they felt sure that their prey could not have escaped them unseen.

And yet at last they were forced to come to the confusion that in some inexplicable way this must have been the case, for how else could they have escaped?
The thought that they had reascended by the rope before it was removed, and that they were hidden in the cave at the time the bodies of the bear and its cubs were carried away, never occurred to them.
All day they wandered about in the bottom of the ravine, searching every possible place, and sometimes removing boulders with great labour, where these were piled together in such a manner that any one could be hidden beneath them.
At nightfall they feasted upon the body of the bear first killed, which had been found where it had fallen in the ravine.