He was unarmed, and a man alone and without weapons in the wilderness was usually as good as lost.

He looked around, trying to study the points of the compass.

The night was not dark.

Trees and bushes stood up distinctly, and on a bough not far away, his eyes suddenly caught a flash of blue.
The flash was made by a small, glossy bird that wavered on a bough, and he was about to turn away, taking no further notice of it, when the bird flew slowly before him and in a direction which he now knew led straight toward the south.

He remembered.