best meat had been cut off. Raw meat is not a nice thing to fill one's pockets with, but they folded it up in fresh leaves and made the best of it. They were all experienced enough to know that they would feel quite differently about these squashy and unpleasant parcels when they had walked long enough to be really hungry.
On they trudged again (stopping to wash three pairs of hands that needed it in the first stream they passed) until the sun rose and the birds began to sing, and more flies than they wanted were buzzing in the bracken. The stiffness from yesterday's rowing began to wear off.
Everybody's spirits rose. The sun grew warmer and they took their helmets off and carried them.
"I suppose we are going right?" said Edmund about an hour later.
"I don't see how we can go wrong as long as we don't bear too much to the left," said Peter. "If we bear too much to the right, the worst that can happen is wasting a little time by striking the Great River too soon and not cutting off the corner."
And again they trudged on with no sound except the thud of their feet and the jingle of their chain shirts.
"Where's this bally Rush got to?" said Edmund a good deal later.
"I certainly thought we'd have struck it by now," said Peter. "But there's nothing to do but keep on." They both knew that the Dwarf was looking anxiously at them, but he said nothing.
And still they trudged on and their mail shirts began to feel very hot and heavy.
"What on earth?" said Peter suddenly.
They had come, without seeing it, almost to the edge of a small precipice from which they looked down into a gorge with a river at the bottom. On the far side the cliffs rose much higher. None of the party except Edmund (and perhaps Trumpkin) was a rock climber.
"I'm sorry," said Peter. "It's my fault for coming this way. We're lost. I've never seen this place in my life before."
The Dwarf gave a low whistle between his teeth.
"Oh, do let's go back and go the other way," said Susan. "I knew all along we'd get lost in these woods."
"Susan!" said Lucy, reproachfully, "don't nag at Peter like that. It's so rotten, and he's doing all he can."
"And don't you snap at Su like that, either," said Edmund. "I think she's quite right."
"Tubs and tortoiseshells!" exclaimed Trumpkin. "If we've got lost coming, what chance have we of finding our way back? And if we're to go back to the Island and begin all over again—even supposing we could—we might as well give the whole thing up. Miraz will have finished with Caspian before we get there at that rate."
"You think we ought to go on?" said Lucy.
"I'm not sure the High King is lost," said Trumpkin. "What's to hinder this river being the Rush?"
"Because the Rush is not in a gorge," said Peter, keeping his temper with some difficulty.
"Your Majesty says is," replied the Dwarf, "but oughtn't you to say was? You knew this country hundreds—it may be a thousand—years ago. Mayn't it have changed? A landslide might have pulled off half the side of that hill, leaving bare rock, and there are your precipices beyond the gorge. Then the Rush might go on deepening its course year after year till you get the little precipices this side. Or there might have been an earthquake, or anything."
"I never thought of that," said Peter.
"And anyway," continued Trumpkin, "even if this is not the Rush, it's flowing roughly north and so it must fall into the Great River anyway. I think I passed something that might have been it, on my way down. So if we go down-stream, to our right, we'll hit the Great River. Perhaps not so high as we'd hoped, but at least we'll be no worse off than if you'd come my way."
"Trumpkin, you're a brick," said Peter. "Come on, then. Down this side of the gorge."
"Look! Look! Look!" cried Lucy.
"Where? What?" asked everyone.
"The Lion," said Lucy. "Aslan himself. Didn't you see?" Her face had changed completely and her eyes shone.
"Do you really mean——" began Peter.
"Where did you think you saw him?" asked Susan.
"Don't talk like a grown-up," said Lucy, stamping her foot. "I didn't think I saw him. I saw him."
"Where, Lu?" asked Peter.
"Right up there between those mountain ashes. No, this side of the gorge. And up, not down. Just the opposite of the way you want to go. And he wanted us to go where he was—up there."
"How do you know that was what he wanted?" asked Edmund.
"He—I—I just know," said Lucy, "by his face."
The others all looked at each other in puzzled silence.
"Her Majesty may well have seen a lion," put in Trumpkin. "There are lions in these woods, I've been told. But it needn't have been a friendly and talking lion any more than the bear was a friendly and talking bear."
"Oh, don't be so stupid," said Lucy. "Do you think I don't know Aslan when I see him?"
"He'd be a pretty elderly lion by now," said Trumpkin, "if he's one you knew when you were here before! And if it could be the same one, what's to prevent him having gone wild and witless like so many others?"
Lucy turned crimson and I think she would have flown at Trumpkin, if Peter had not laid his hand on her arm. "The D.L.F. doesn't understand. How could he? You must just take it, Trumpkin, that we do really know about Aslan; a little bit about him, I mean. And you mustn't talk about him like that again. It isn't lucky for one thing: and it's all nonsense for another. The only question is whether Aslan was really there."
"But I know he was," said Lucy, her eyes filling with tears.
"Yes, Lu, but we don't, you see," said Peter.
"There's nothing for it but a vote," said Edmund.
"All right," replied Peter. "You're the eldest, D.L.F. What do you vote for? Up or down?"
"Down," said the Dwarf. "I know nothing about Aslan. But I do know that if we turn left and follow the gorge up, it might lead us all day before we found a place where we could cross it. Whereas if we turn right and go down, we're bound to reach the Great River in about a couple of hours. And if there are any real lions about, we want to go away from them, not towards them."
"What do you say, Susan?"
"Don't be angry, Lu," said Susan, "but I do think we should go down. I'm dead tired. Do let's get out of this wretched wood into the open as quick as we can. And none of us except you saw anything."
"Edmund?" said Peter.
"Well, there's just this," said Edmund, speaking quickly and turning a little red. "When we first discovered Narnia a year ago—or a thousand years ago, whichever it is—it was Lucy who discovered it first and none of us would believe her. I was the worst of the lot, I know. Yet she was right after all. Wouldn't it be fair to
