"Well, if they'll fix it at what you're worth," said his uncle, grimly, "I shall not object to the payment."
Ultimately Paul obtained the desired furlough by resorting to his usual threat; he would sell his commission, buy a string of camels, and spend the rest of his life in trying to discover the sources of the Nile.
Thus it came to pass that a few days after this interview young Captain Cressingham embarked on board the Austrian Lloyd's steamer _Metternich_, bound for Zara, the clean, well-built capital of Dalmatia, directing his voyage to this city in order to renew old memories with some former college-chums, who were about to pass their summer holiday in its neighborhood.
Finding that he had anticipated the arrival of his friends by a few days, Paul resolved to spend the interval in taking a pedestrian tour southward as far as Sebenico: and accordingly he set off, without either companion or servant, and wearing his uniform, partly because as a soldier he was proud of it, partly because experience had taught him that in these eastern regions a uniform inspires respect in the minds of innkeepers, if not in those of banditti.
He passed the first night of this journey at a wayside hostelry.
At sunrise he resumed his course, walking amid picturesque scenery--on the right the sparkling sea, on the left glorious pine-clad mountains.
Late in the afternoon Paul, who had followed the post-road, reached a point where it entered a magnificent forest. As this wild-wood was just the sort of place where banditti might be expected to lurk, Paul's first impulse was to turn aside, and to take the more circuitous way along the sea-beach.
"You fear!" a secret voice seemed to whisper: and the reproach decided his route. Not even in his own eyes would he be a coward.
This choice of a road was but a small matter, one might think; yet it was to form the turning-point of his life.
He walked forward at a quick pace, and, with an eye to a challenge from some outlaw of the forest, he kept his hand constantly upon the butt of his revolver.
He did not meet with a bandit, however, but with a bear--the first he had ever seen in a wild, free state.
The creature came shambling from the wood on one side of the road a few yards in front of him, and there it stood, with its eyes fixed upon the wayfarer, as if questioning the right of man to invade these solitudes.