About midday
You eat chop , Major , I pack . '' Presently they started on their trudge through those endless trees , with Fear for a companion . Even the porters , who had been told nothing , seemed more afraid than usual , though whether this was because they `` smell rat , '' as Jeekie called it , or owing to the progressive breakdown of their nervous systems , Alan did not know . About midday they stopped to eat because the men were too tired to walk further without rest . For an hour or more they had been looking for a comparatively open place , but as it chanced could find none , so were obliged to halt in dense forest . Just as they had finished their meal and were preparing to proceed , that which they had feared , happened , since from somewhere behind the tree boles came a volley of reed arrows . One struck a porter in the neck , one fixed itself in Alan 's helmet without touching him , and no less than three hit Jeekie on the back and stuck there , providentially enough in the substance of the cork mattress that he still carried on his shoulders , which the feeble shafts had not the strength to pierce .