It was a nasty shock, but, in no way dismayed, he tried to pick up his old spoor, and after a patient search he hit it off, and went on with a little laugh.

He hesitated when he entered another little open space, but finally kept on in the same direction, and finding the way easier, stepped out confidently, although the weight of the buck was beginning to tell, combined with the closeness of the air in these long aisles.
At last the reeds thinned, and he stepped out into the open.

He slipped the legs of the buck over his head to stretch himself, and then a little cry of disgust broke from his lips, for the place he had come to was not the outskirts of the reeds at all, but merely an open space, larger than any he had met before, with a little grass mound in the centre.

Mounting this, he could see a run of trees in the distance, and in between a sea of green leaves, giving back myriad points of light under the rays of the sun.

Queer soft noises came out of the white rows of reeds all around, and from the vast expanse a continual murmur that was something like the moaning of the wind in the pines.
He fired his gun off and listened.