CHAPTER VII.
ALONE IN THE GREAT FOREST Imagine to yourself one accustomed to live in the great treeless plain, accustomed to open his eyes each morning to the wide blue sky and the brilliant sunlight, now for the first time opening them in that vast gloomy forest, where neither wind nor sunlight came, and no sound was heard, and twilight lasted all day long! All round him were trees with straight, tall grey trunks, and behind and beyond them yet other trees--trees everywhere that stood motionless like pillars of stone supporting the dim green roof of foliage far above.
It was like a vast gloomy prison in which he had been shut, and he longed to make his escape to where he could see the rising sun and feel the fanning wind on his cheeks.

He looked round at the others: they were all stretched on the ground still in a deep sleep, and it frightened him a little to look at their great, broad, dark faces framed in masses of black hair.

He felt that he hated them, for they had treated him badly: the children had taken his clothes, compelling him to go naked, and had beaten and bruised him, and he had not been pitied and helped by their elders.

By and by, very quietly and cautiously he crept away from among them, and made his escape into the gloomy wood.

On one side the forest shadows looked less dark than the other, and on that side he went, for it was the side on which the sun rose, and the direction he had been travelling when he first met with the savages.