Then, as though by common consent, they went to the canoe, bailed her out, and started, Leonard and Otter using the paddles.
Now it was that the dwarf's marvellous memory for locality came into play.

Without him they could not have gone a mile, for their course ran through numberless lagoons and canals, cut by nature and the current in the dense banks of reeds.

There was nothing to enable them to distinguish one of these canals from another; in truth they all formed a portion of this mouth of the river.

There were no landmarks to guide them; everywhere spread a sea of swamp diversified by rush-clothed islands, which to the inexperienced eye presented few points of difference.

This was the road that Otter led them on unfalteringly; ten years had passed since he had travelled it, but he never even hesitated.
Time upon time they came to new openings in the reeds leading this way and that.