Could he have passed them?
Where should he look for Gilder and Plater?
Would it not be better, after all, to await their return on the raft?
Of course it would.

He had been a fool to leave it, and now his best plan was to get back to it as quickly as possible.
These thoughts occupied less than a minute, and so impatient was the man to regain the raft he had just left that inside of two minutes more he again stood on the river-bank.

He had been gone barely five minutes, and in that time he had not seen a human being.

Now he could not see the raft.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again.