about five in the afternoon
It was my business to get somehow to my chief , and I was in the deuce of a stew how to manage it . It was no good following the line of the natives ' march , for they would have been between me and my goal , and the only way was to try and outflank them by going due east , in the Deira direction , and then turning north , so as to strike the railway about half-way to the mines . I told Utterson we had better scatter , otherwise we should have no chance of getting through a densely populated native country . So , about five in the afternoon I set off with my chief shikari , who , by good luck , was not a Labonga , and dived into the jungly bush which skirts the hills . `` For three days I had a baddish time . We steered by the stars , travelling chiefly by night , and we showed extraordinary skill in missing the water-holes . I had a touch of fever and got light-headed , and it was all I could do to struggle through the thick grass and wait-a-bit thorns .