"Then that is where I must have gotten mixed up--maybe after we pulled Tom from the mud."
"We'll have to go back," came from Tom. "Too bad! But it can't be helped. I don't blame you, Dick," he added, hastily.
"Neither do I," put in Sam. "Anybody might make such a mistake, with nothing but that smoky lantern to guide him."
They turned back, and after a while reached the edge of the swamp. Here, after a long search, they found their own footprints.
"Now we are all right!" cried Sam. "Come on!"
"Yes, and let us be careful that we don't make another mistake," added Tom.
"I don't know about this," said Dick, hesitatingly. "Somehow, it doesn't look altogether right to me."
"It doesn't seem to be the right direction. But they are our footprints, so we may as well follow them."
They went on and proceeded for several hundred feet in silence. Then Tom uttered a cry of dismay.
"Do you know what we are doing? We are heading for the road again, instead of for the place where we left the _Dartaway_!"
"I am. See that fallen tree? We are about half way between the road and the swamp."
"Yes, I remember the tree, and you are right," said Dick. "This is too bad! And when we are in such a hurry, too!" His voice had a note of despair in it.
"Well, keep to this trail now," said Sam. "Don't miss it,--only follow it backwards."
Once more the three Rover boys turned, and now they scanned every foot of the trail with care. Again they passed the swamp and there discovered how they had made a false turn. Then they hurried forward, under the trees and through the bushes.
The darkness of night had closed in all around them, and the only light was that of the smoky lantern, and from the few stars that shone down through the tree tops. Everything was silent, excepting for the occasional note of a tree toad, or the "glunk" of a frog in the swamp.
"We ought to be there by now," said Sam, a few minutes later.
"There she is!" cried Dick, swinging the lamp up over his head. And in the widening circle of light the three youths beheld the biplane, resting exactly as they had left the craft.
"Thank goodness!" cried Tom. "I was beginning to think we had made another mistake."
They hung the lantern on a tree limb and then lit the lights attached to the biplane, for they had insisted that the _Dartaway_ be supplied with these,--not for the purpose of flying at night, but so that the machine could be lit up in the dark if it rested in the road or in some other place where some person or vehicle might run into it.