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invisible branches that lashed at their faces. Whenever Kate felt the tickle of a leaf or a blade of grass against her skin, she became convinced it was a spider and came to a halt, rubbing herself down frantically and slapping the legs of her jeans just in case.

"Oh, this is hopeless!" exclaimed Peter after a while. "I can't see a thing--we could be walking around in circles for all we know!"

"Okay," sighed Kate. "Let's stay here until morning. But I'm not going to sleep, though."

"Well, I am."

Peter flopped down. His head was pounding and he felt weak with hunger. He looked up through the branches at the night sky. A carpet of milky stars hung over the valley. Could they really be in Australia? He began to convince himself that the night sky looked upside down.

Kate hesitated before speaking. "Earlier on, when I said that I knew you were trouble as soon as I looked at you..."

"Yes..."

"Well, that was a bit unfair--probably."

"Oh. Okay."

Kate lay on the bare ground next to him. "Roll over," she said. "I think we should lie back to back for safety and to keep warm."

"No way!" said Peter. "I'm not sleeping next to a girl."

Kate was too tired to argue and lay with her back against a young beech tree. She could just make out Peter in the dappled moonlight.

"My dad will find us, you know. He's really smart and he'd never let anything happen to me. He'll do whatever it takes to get us back, I know he will."

Kate, too, was in worse shape than she cared to admit to herself. She felt that she couldn't have got up again now even if she'd wanted to.

Peter wondered if anyone had yet dared disturb an important business meeting to tell his father that his son had got mislaid.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm sure you're right."

Kate did not reply. She was already asleep.
    FIVE
A Breakfast of Grilled Trout

In which Peter goes fishing and Kate gives her companion a fright
    As the sun rose, its rays started their slow descent down the valley's grassy slopes. Far below, a ghostly white mist hung above the stream, revealing the water's path as it passed through the middle of the wood where, under the green canopy, Peter and Kate slept on.

Kate was dead to the world, wrapped around the trunk of the beech tree, her white face streaked with mud and tears. Peter, though, was beginning to stir. He looked about him. Everything was covered in beads of dew that glistened in the half-light. How stiff and damp he felt after a night sleeping on bare ground. His T-shirt was sticking to his back, and a vague whiff of cowpat lingered around his anorak, reminding him of the events of the previous day. He looked over at Kate, whose back rose and fell in a slow, regular rhythm.

He decided not to wake her but to explore for a while on his own. It suddenly occurred to him that he had never woken up without a grown-up telling him what to do. What freedom! He followed the path of the little stream. Kicking his way through the bracken, Peter felt almost in a holiday mood. Somehow, this morning, he could not feel scared or miserable. He bet that the "wolf" they had heard the previous night was just a big dog locked out for the night. And even though it was still a puzzle how they'd got here, all they had to do was find a telephone, call home, and someone would pick them up straightaway.

He crouched down to scoop up some water with his hands--if there was nothing to eat, at least he could drink. Plop! Out of the corner of his eye Peter saw a fish break through the surface of the water to catch a fly. Slowly and quietly Peter stood up to see if he could catch sight of any more. His heart leaped as he counted five, six, seven beautiful brown trout swimming upstream among the bright green weed that splayed itself out like hair in the gentle current. The trouts' backs were an undistinguished greeny brown, but there was no mistaking their shimmering sides, speckled with dots of red, green, and gray. For a boy who had caught his first trout with his bare hands on