THE SURPRISE AT THE POST From the moment that the adventurers turned their backs upon the Woonga country Mukoki was in command.

With the storm in their favor everything else now depended upon the craft of the old pathfinder.

There was neither moon nor wind to guide them, and even Wabi felt that he was not competent to strike a straight trail in a strange country and a night storm.

But Mukoki, still a savage in the ways of the wilderness, seemed possessed of that mysterious sixth sense which is known as the sense of orientation--that almost supernatural instinct which guides the carrier pigeon as straight as a die to its home-cote hundreds of miles away.
Again and again during that thrilling night's flight Wabi or Rod would ask the Indian where Wabinosh House lay, and he would point out its direction to them without hesitation.

And each time it seemed to the city youth that he pointed a different way, and it proved to him how easy it was to become hopelessly lost in the wilderness.
Not until midnight did they pause to rest.