For the three Americans, each step was a wrench and pull, for their shoes sank into the suck and squelch of the trail; the foot ahead, sinking, could find little purchase from which to pull up the foot that followed; meanwhile the warm rain beat down through the billion leaves of the forest and ran down their collars and, mingling with their sweat, collected inside their waists at their belts, and soaked through the canvas packs. They worked through the wet and the muck in a stifling heat, swinging bolos to clear the new vines that had looped across the trail since the last travelers had come that way, and by noon on their first day they were tired beyond caring. They had also reached that point of fatigue where no man will admit to another that he is tired, each subconsciously thinking if he can make it, so can I, and the sight of the spindly barefoot children was a constant reproof that drove them (and, of course, the children) for yet another hour through the mold-smelling wet tangle of the jungle web. Each of the three Americans was a proud, powerful man. Fertig was tall, deep-chested, with the long flat muscles of the trained athlete that he still was in his early forties; Hedges, outwardly a wisp of a man, was yet compounded of sinews bound together by anger; Offret was a stocky engine built for . brutal wear. Yet this jungle through which Fertig could not stride; which Offret could not smash; which Hedges could not sear or lay waste—this thing of ooze and give and grip; this steaminess and wet slap of leaves; this all-surrounding, dark, unending one-foot-at-a-time wrench and skid—brought all thought to nothing and spent their strength on nothing.