Chapter Thirty Four.How to get back?“Almost as bad as you tacking out of the harbour, Morny,” said Rodd that evening, as the two vessels glided up the rapidly narrowing and greatly winding river.“Oh no,” replied the French lad. “There is no tremendous storm of wind blowing, threatening to tear the sails to ribbons, no soldiers in boats using their muskets, no big guns sending heavy balls from the forts.”“No,” said the skipper, who had overheard the remarks; “not a bit like it, Mr Rodd. It is rather awkward work, though, and we have to be always on the dodge, else the next thing would be we should go ramming our noses right in the muddy banks and getting stuck fast; and that wouldn’t do.”“Oh, you would get off again next tide,” said Rodd carelessly.“Mebbe,” said the skipper. “As the old country chaps at home say, we mought and we moughtn’t.”“Look, Morny,” cried Rodd. “There’s another of those great crocs. What a thick one! Why, that one must be five-and-twenty feet long.”“Fourteen,” grunted the skipper.“No, no; it must have been twenty,” cried Rodd.“Fourteen, outside,” growled the skipper. “How can you tell when you only catch sight of them on the move?”“Well, it was a tremendous thickness,” said Rodd.“Ay, it was thick enough, and heavy enough; and they are stronger than horses. And just you look here, youngster, while we are up this river, where I dare say they swarm, you had better keep your eyes open, for those chaps will pull a deer or a bullock into the water before the poor brute knows where it is, and as to human natur’, they lie waiting close to the banks for the poor niggers, men, women or children, who come down to get water, and they nip them off in a moment.”“Ugh! Horrible!” cried Rodd.“Yes, and what made me speak to you was that we are going to settle down for a bit up here in the forest where the sun will be very hot, and where there’ll be no end of great shady trees hanging over the river side and seeming to ask folks to jump in and have a nice cooling swim.”“I say, captain!”“Oh, I’m not laughing at you, my lads,” said the skipper sharply. “When we are lying moored or at anchor up here it’s just the sort of thing that you might make up your minds to do without saying a word to anybody. I know I should have done so when I was your age. But I just say to you now solemn like—don’t you do it. For if there’s anything one of these great reptiles likes it’s a nice clean French or English boy.”“Oh, come now,” cried Rodd merrily, “you don’t call that talking solemn like, captain?”A grim smile dawned upon the old sailor’s countenance.“Well, no,” he said; “but I mean it solemn like. I don’t suppose one of they crocs would study about what colour it was, but they go for anything that’s alive and moving, hold on with those great teeth of theirs, and whatever it is they catch, it’s soon drowned when it’s pulled below, and never heard of again.—Starboard, my lads! Starboard!” he shouted, with both hands to his mouth, and the schooner curved round and went off on another tack in obedience to the helm.—“It’s rather an awkward job, my lads,” continued the skipper. “You see, we have to sail to all points of the compass, and one minute you have got the wind blowing gently fair and free from right ahead or dead astarn, and the next you are going into shelter and got no wind at all.”“But we keep on going steadily up the river, captain,” said Rodd.“Yes, my lad; we have got this strong tide in our favour. I am reckoning that if we drop anchor soon we shall be able to get as far as we want next tide.”“But how far do you mean to go?” asked Morny anxiously.“Oh, a good way up yet,” replied the skipper.“But why not keep on now?” asked Rodd.“Because I want to pick a good berth before the dark comes down and catches and leaves us nohow. Got any more questions to ask?”“Hundreds,” cried Rodd merrily.“Humph! Then I think I ought to have my pay raised. I joined theMaid of Salcombeto sail her, not to give you lessons in jography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, as it used to say in my lesson book when I was a little ’un.”“Ah, well, I won’t bother you any more to-day, captain,” said Rodd; “only one always wants to know what things are when they are quite fresh.”Captain Chubb did not answer for the moment, for he had to shout another order to the steersman and make two or three signals with his hand to those on board the brig, which was following in the schooner’s track, keeping as close as it could to be safe.At the end of five minutes, though, he had returned to his old position, and grunted out with a look as if he wanted to be questioned more—“Well, I suppose such youngsters as you like to know.”Then all at once he shouted out a fresh order, which was followed by the rattling out of the cable through the hawse-hole as the anchor splashed and went down to a pretty good depth before the rope was stopped, one order having acted for both vessels, and just before dark they swung round head to stream, with the water lapping loudly against their bows.“That’s enough for one day,” grunted the captain. “Safe and snug a harbour as any one could wish to be in, and there’s the trees, you see, on both sides, good, sound, solid forest trees such as would cut up into fine timber, and all the mangroves left far enough behind.”In a remarkably short time, as the two lads stood watching the shores, the forest on either side grew intensely black, and though the steward announced that the evening meal was ready, no one seemed disposed to go below, for, succeeding to the solemn evening silence, they seemed to be surrounded by strange sounds from the depths of the forest as well as from the river, whose current began to grow sluggish, suggesting that before long the tide would be at its height, and ready to turn with the rushing of the water outward to the sea.“Why, it’s awful,” said Morny, in a subdued tone, as he stood with Rodd gazing at the nearest shore.“Yes, not very nice,” replied Rodd. “You and your father had better stop on board here to-night.”“Oh no. Our boat is hanging astern. We shall go back.”Rodd thought that he should not like to attempt to row from vessel to vessel in the darkness of such a night, for something seemed to suggest to him the possibility of being swept out to sea; but he did not say so, for fear of making his companion nervous, and they stood listening and whispering together, trying to give names to some of the uncouth noises which floated to their ears.Many were sharp quick splashes as if some great fish had sprung out of the water in pursuit of prey, or in a desperate effort to escape a pursuer. Then every now and then there would be a resounding slap, as if one of the great reptiles that haunted the river had struck the surface a tremendous blow with its tail.“What’s that?” asked Rodd, directly after, as a low, deep, mournful sound came from amongst the trees upon the shore, sounding like a piteous cry for help from some woman in distress.This was succeeded by a painful silence, and then Rodd raised his voice—“Captain! Captain Chubb! Do you hear that? Are you there?”“Oh yes, here I am, my lad,” came from out of the darkness. “And I should be precious deaf if I hadn’t heard it.”“Well, ought we to take the boat and try and save her?” cried the boy passionately.“How do you know it’s aher, my lad? I should say it was ahim. It’s the cock birds and not the hens that shout like that.”“Bird!” cried Morny. “It was a human being.”“Ah, it do sound something like it, my lad, but that aren’t a human. It’s one of them great long-legged storky chaps with the big bills, calling to his wife to say he’s found frogs, or something of that kind. You wait a minute, and if she don’t come you will hear him call ‘Quanko!’—There, what did I say?” said the skipper, with a chuckle, as in trumpet tones came the cry of the great long-legged creature in a sonorousQuang, quang, quang, quang!“Why, the captain seems to know everything,” said Morny admiringly. “I say, how did you know that, sir?”“Oh,” said the skipper modestly, “one just picks up these sort of things a little bit at a time. Now then, do you hear that?”The two lads did hear it—a peculiar musical (?) wailing cry which was repeated again and again and then died out, half-smothered by a chorus of croaking from the swampy river banks.“Oh yes, we can hear,” cried Rodd. “We can do nothing else but listen. But what was it made that cry?”“Ah! That’s one of the things I don’t know,” said the skipper, chuckling. “What should you think it was?”“Oh, I don’t want to be laughed at again,” cried Rodd, “for making another mistake. Perhaps it’s some other kind of stork.”“Nay, you don’t think it is,” said the skipper. “You think different to that. Come, have a guess.”“Well,” said Rodd, “I should say it was some kind of great cat.”“Right, my lad; not much doubt about that. I don’t know what sort it is, but it’s one of them spotted gentlemen. I should say there’d be plenty of them here. Well, I have had about enough of it for to-day. I am just going to see about the watch, and to say a few words below to your father about having a good look-out kept, and then it won’t be very long before I turn in to my cot, for I am tired. This has been a rather anxious day.”“You are going to speak to my father about having a good look-out kept?”“Well, yes, my lad, and with our men well-armed. I don’t say as it’s likely, and we are too near the sea for any villages of blacks; but it wouldn’t be very nice to have two or three big canoes come and make fast to us in the night, and find the decks swarming with niggers who might think that we were made on purpose for them to kill.”“Why, you don’t think that’s likely, do you?” cried Rodd.“Not at all, my lad. But safe bind, safe find. What I have always found is this—that when you keep a very strict look-out nothing happens, and when you don’t something does. Are you lads coming down?”“Not yet,” said Rodd.“I suppose you will be going soon, won’t you, Mr Morny?” said the skipper, who somehow always forgot their visitor’s title.“I am expecting my father will be coming up soon to say it is time.”“Yes; I shouldn’t leave it much longer,” said the skipper. “I’ll tell him.—Joe Cross, there!”“Ay, ay, sir!”“You and four men stand by with the gig to take the Count aboard his vessel. You will just drop down head to stream ready to pull hard if the tide seems a bit too heavy; and you, my lad, be ready forward with the end of the line made fast to the thwart and the grapnel clear, ready to drop overboard to get hold of the mud if you find the current too strong.”“Ay, ay, sir!” cried the man; and the skipper went below.“I am glad of that, Joe,” said Rodd eagerly. “I was thinking whether there was any risk of the boat being swept away.”“So was I, sir; but it’s always the same. Whenever I think of something that ought to be done I always find that our old man has thought of it before. Did you see that we have swung round to our anchor?”“No,” said Rodd.“We have, sir, and the tide’s running out like five hundred million mill-streams. You come for’ard here and feel how the cable’s all of a jigger, just as if the river had made up its mind to pull it right out of the mud.”The two lads followed, and it was exactly as the man had said, for the great Manilla rope literally thrilled as if with life, while the river glided by the schooner’s cutwater with a loud hiss.“Why, Joe,” cried Rodd, as he gazed in the sailor’s dimly-seen face, “how are you going to manage to row back?”“Well, sir, that’s one of the things I have been asking myself.”“Well, you had better speak to the skipper.”“Not me, sir. I’m not going to try to teach him. If I was to say a word he’d jump down my throat bang. Oh, he knows what he’s about, or he wouldn’t have told me to stand by with that there grapnel.”“Yes, of course he’d know,” said Rodd quietly. “I should like to know how you’d got on.”The two lads stood listening to the weird sounds from the shore, every now and then being puzzled by something that was entirely fresh, while the swiftly running water gleamed dimly with the faintly seen reflection of the stars, showing that a mist was gathering overhead, while Joe Cross and the men lowered down the boat and hauled her up to the gangway, ready to convey the visitors to the brig.They had hardly finished preparations before the voices that had come before in murmurs from the cabin were heard ascending to the deck, and the Count cried out of the darkness—“Are you ready there, Morny, my son?”“Yes, my father,” replied the lad, and Rodd walked with him to the side.The men were in their places, with their oars ready to hand to lower at once, Joe Cross holding on in front with his boat-hook through a ring-bolt. A few more words passed between the Count and Uncle Paul, and then the former bade his son descend into his place, following slowly directly after.“Good-night,” he said.“Good-night, Rodd!” cried Morny. “We shan’t be long getting to the brig.”“No,” cried Rodd. “Good-night! Here, one moment; I’ll slip down and come back with the gig.”Before any one else could speak he had dropped into the boat, his feet touching the nearest thwart as the skipper cried “Let go!” and almost the next moment the men were pulling hard, while Joe Cross dropped upon his knees to feel for the grapnel so as to make sure it was at hand, while to Rodd it seemed that the boat was motionless in the rapid river and that the schooner had been suddenly snatched away.
“Almost as bad as you tacking out of the harbour, Morny,” said Rodd that evening, as the two vessels glided up the rapidly narrowing and greatly winding river.
“Oh no,” replied the French lad. “There is no tremendous storm of wind blowing, threatening to tear the sails to ribbons, no soldiers in boats using their muskets, no big guns sending heavy balls from the forts.”
“No,” said the skipper, who had overheard the remarks; “not a bit like it, Mr Rodd. It is rather awkward work, though, and we have to be always on the dodge, else the next thing would be we should go ramming our noses right in the muddy banks and getting stuck fast; and that wouldn’t do.”
“Oh, you would get off again next tide,” said Rodd carelessly.
“Mebbe,” said the skipper. “As the old country chaps at home say, we mought and we moughtn’t.”
“Look, Morny,” cried Rodd. “There’s another of those great crocs. What a thick one! Why, that one must be five-and-twenty feet long.”
“Fourteen,” grunted the skipper.
“No, no; it must have been twenty,” cried Rodd.
“Fourteen, outside,” growled the skipper. “How can you tell when you only catch sight of them on the move?”
“Well, it was a tremendous thickness,” said Rodd.
“Ay, it was thick enough, and heavy enough; and they are stronger than horses. And just you look here, youngster, while we are up this river, where I dare say they swarm, you had better keep your eyes open, for those chaps will pull a deer or a bullock into the water before the poor brute knows where it is, and as to human natur’, they lie waiting close to the banks for the poor niggers, men, women or children, who come down to get water, and they nip them off in a moment.”
“Ugh! Horrible!” cried Rodd.
“Yes, and what made me speak to you was that we are going to settle down for a bit up here in the forest where the sun will be very hot, and where there’ll be no end of great shady trees hanging over the river side and seeming to ask folks to jump in and have a nice cooling swim.”
“I say, captain!”
“Oh, I’m not laughing at you, my lads,” said the skipper sharply. “When we are lying moored or at anchor up here it’s just the sort of thing that you might make up your minds to do without saying a word to anybody. I know I should have done so when I was your age. But I just say to you now solemn like—don’t you do it. For if there’s anything one of these great reptiles likes it’s a nice clean French or English boy.”
“Oh, come now,” cried Rodd merrily, “you don’t call that talking solemn like, captain?”
A grim smile dawned upon the old sailor’s countenance.
“Well, no,” he said; “but I mean it solemn like. I don’t suppose one of they crocs would study about what colour it was, but they go for anything that’s alive and moving, hold on with those great teeth of theirs, and whatever it is they catch, it’s soon drowned when it’s pulled below, and never heard of again.—Starboard, my lads! Starboard!” he shouted, with both hands to his mouth, and the schooner curved round and went off on another tack in obedience to the helm.—“It’s rather an awkward job, my lads,” continued the skipper. “You see, we have to sail to all points of the compass, and one minute you have got the wind blowing gently fair and free from right ahead or dead astarn, and the next you are going into shelter and got no wind at all.”
“But we keep on going steadily up the river, captain,” said Rodd.
“Yes, my lad; we have got this strong tide in our favour. I am reckoning that if we drop anchor soon we shall be able to get as far as we want next tide.”
“But how far do you mean to go?” asked Morny anxiously.
“Oh, a good way up yet,” replied the skipper.
“But why not keep on now?” asked Rodd.
“Because I want to pick a good berth before the dark comes down and catches and leaves us nohow. Got any more questions to ask?”
“Hundreds,” cried Rodd merrily.
“Humph! Then I think I ought to have my pay raised. I joined theMaid of Salcombeto sail her, not to give you lessons in jography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, as it used to say in my lesson book when I was a little ’un.”
“Ah, well, I won’t bother you any more to-day, captain,” said Rodd; “only one always wants to know what things are when they are quite fresh.”
Captain Chubb did not answer for the moment, for he had to shout another order to the steersman and make two or three signals with his hand to those on board the brig, which was following in the schooner’s track, keeping as close as it could to be safe.
At the end of five minutes, though, he had returned to his old position, and grunted out with a look as if he wanted to be questioned more—
“Well, I suppose such youngsters as you like to know.”
Then all at once he shouted out a fresh order, which was followed by the rattling out of the cable through the hawse-hole as the anchor splashed and went down to a pretty good depth before the rope was stopped, one order having acted for both vessels, and just before dark they swung round head to stream, with the water lapping loudly against their bows.
“That’s enough for one day,” grunted the captain. “Safe and snug a harbour as any one could wish to be in, and there’s the trees, you see, on both sides, good, sound, solid forest trees such as would cut up into fine timber, and all the mangroves left far enough behind.”
In a remarkably short time, as the two lads stood watching the shores, the forest on either side grew intensely black, and though the steward announced that the evening meal was ready, no one seemed disposed to go below, for, succeeding to the solemn evening silence, they seemed to be surrounded by strange sounds from the depths of the forest as well as from the river, whose current began to grow sluggish, suggesting that before long the tide would be at its height, and ready to turn with the rushing of the water outward to the sea.
“Why, it’s awful,” said Morny, in a subdued tone, as he stood with Rodd gazing at the nearest shore.
“Yes, not very nice,” replied Rodd. “You and your father had better stop on board here to-night.”
“Oh no. Our boat is hanging astern. We shall go back.”
Rodd thought that he should not like to attempt to row from vessel to vessel in the darkness of such a night, for something seemed to suggest to him the possibility of being swept out to sea; but he did not say so, for fear of making his companion nervous, and they stood listening and whispering together, trying to give names to some of the uncouth noises which floated to their ears.
Many were sharp quick splashes as if some great fish had sprung out of the water in pursuit of prey, or in a desperate effort to escape a pursuer. Then every now and then there would be a resounding slap, as if one of the great reptiles that haunted the river had struck the surface a tremendous blow with its tail.
“What’s that?” asked Rodd, directly after, as a low, deep, mournful sound came from amongst the trees upon the shore, sounding like a piteous cry for help from some woman in distress.
This was succeeded by a painful silence, and then Rodd raised his voice—
“Captain! Captain Chubb! Do you hear that? Are you there?”
“Oh yes, here I am, my lad,” came from out of the darkness. “And I should be precious deaf if I hadn’t heard it.”
“Well, ought we to take the boat and try and save her?” cried the boy passionately.
“How do you know it’s aher, my lad? I should say it was ahim. It’s the cock birds and not the hens that shout like that.”
“Bird!” cried Morny. “It was a human being.”
“Ah, it do sound something like it, my lad, but that aren’t a human. It’s one of them great long-legged storky chaps with the big bills, calling to his wife to say he’s found frogs, or something of that kind. You wait a minute, and if she don’t come you will hear him call ‘Quanko!’—There, what did I say?” said the skipper, with a chuckle, as in trumpet tones came the cry of the great long-legged creature in a sonorousQuang, quang, quang, quang!
“Why, the captain seems to know everything,” said Morny admiringly. “I say, how did you know that, sir?”
“Oh,” said the skipper modestly, “one just picks up these sort of things a little bit at a time. Now then, do you hear that?”
The two lads did hear it—a peculiar musical (?) wailing cry which was repeated again and again and then died out, half-smothered by a chorus of croaking from the swampy river banks.
“Oh yes, we can hear,” cried Rodd. “We can do nothing else but listen. But what was it made that cry?”
“Ah! That’s one of the things I don’t know,” said the skipper, chuckling. “What should you think it was?”
“Oh, I don’t want to be laughed at again,” cried Rodd, “for making another mistake. Perhaps it’s some other kind of stork.”
“Nay, you don’t think it is,” said the skipper. “You think different to that. Come, have a guess.”
“Well,” said Rodd, “I should say it was some kind of great cat.”
“Right, my lad; not much doubt about that. I don’t know what sort it is, but it’s one of them spotted gentlemen. I should say there’d be plenty of them here. Well, I have had about enough of it for to-day. I am just going to see about the watch, and to say a few words below to your father about having a good look-out kept, and then it won’t be very long before I turn in to my cot, for I am tired. This has been a rather anxious day.”
“You are going to speak to my father about having a good look-out kept?”
“Well, yes, my lad, and with our men well-armed. I don’t say as it’s likely, and we are too near the sea for any villages of blacks; but it wouldn’t be very nice to have two or three big canoes come and make fast to us in the night, and find the decks swarming with niggers who might think that we were made on purpose for them to kill.”
“Why, you don’t think that’s likely, do you?” cried Rodd.
“Not at all, my lad. But safe bind, safe find. What I have always found is this—that when you keep a very strict look-out nothing happens, and when you don’t something does. Are you lads coming down?”
“Not yet,” said Rodd.
“I suppose you will be going soon, won’t you, Mr Morny?” said the skipper, who somehow always forgot their visitor’s title.
“I am expecting my father will be coming up soon to say it is time.”
“Yes; I shouldn’t leave it much longer,” said the skipper. “I’ll tell him.—Joe Cross, there!”
“Ay, ay, sir!”
“You and four men stand by with the gig to take the Count aboard his vessel. You will just drop down head to stream ready to pull hard if the tide seems a bit too heavy; and you, my lad, be ready forward with the end of the line made fast to the thwart and the grapnel clear, ready to drop overboard to get hold of the mud if you find the current too strong.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” cried the man; and the skipper went below.
“I am glad of that, Joe,” said Rodd eagerly. “I was thinking whether there was any risk of the boat being swept away.”
“So was I, sir; but it’s always the same. Whenever I think of something that ought to be done I always find that our old man has thought of it before. Did you see that we have swung round to our anchor?”
“No,” said Rodd.
“We have, sir, and the tide’s running out like five hundred million mill-streams. You come for’ard here and feel how the cable’s all of a jigger, just as if the river had made up its mind to pull it right out of the mud.”
The two lads followed, and it was exactly as the man had said, for the great Manilla rope literally thrilled as if with life, while the river glided by the schooner’s cutwater with a loud hiss.
“Why, Joe,” cried Rodd, as he gazed in the sailor’s dimly-seen face, “how are you going to manage to row back?”
“Well, sir, that’s one of the things I have been asking myself.”
“Well, you had better speak to the skipper.”
“Not me, sir. I’m not going to try to teach him. If I was to say a word he’d jump down my throat bang. Oh, he knows what he’s about, or he wouldn’t have told me to stand by with that there grapnel.”
“Yes, of course he’d know,” said Rodd quietly. “I should like to know how you’d got on.”
The two lads stood listening to the weird sounds from the shore, every now and then being puzzled by something that was entirely fresh, while the swiftly running water gleamed dimly with the faintly seen reflection of the stars, showing that a mist was gathering overhead, while Joe Cross and the men lowered down the boat and hauled her up to the gangway, ready to convey the visitors to the brig.
They had hardly finished preparations before the voices that had come before in murmurs from the cabin were heard ascending to the deck, and the Count cried out of the darkness—
“Are you ready there, Morny, my son?”
“Yes, my father,” replied the lad, and Rodd walked with him to the side.
The men were in their places, with their oars ready to hand to lower at once, Joe Cross holding on in front with his boat-hook through a ring-bolt. A few more words passed between the Count and Uncle Paul, and then the former bade his son descend into his place, following slowly directly after.
“Good-night,” he said.
“Good-night, Rodd!” cried Morny. “We shan’t be long getting to the brig.”
“No,” cried Rodd. “Good-night! Here, one moment; I’ll slip down and come back with the gig.”
Before any one else could speak he had dropped into the boat, his feet touching the nearest thwart as the skipper cried “Let go!” and almost the next moment the men were pulling hard, while Joe Cross dropped upon his knees to feel for the grapnel so as to make sure it was at hand, while to Rodd it seemed that the boat was motionless in the rapid river and that the schooner had been suddenly snatched away.
Chapter Thirty Five.Up a Tree.“Put your backs into it, my lads,” cried Joe Cross, almost fiercely. “Steady! Steady all, and look out that you don’t have a smash. Pull! Hard! Here, I shall be tugged out of the boat!”For it seemed almost directly after that the dimly-seen hull of the brig rose up out of the darkness close at hand, while from where he knelt—fortunately for himself—the coxswain felt his arms being jerked out of their sockets as he caught with the boat-hook at the brig’s main chains. “Stand by there!” he roared, as he held on. “Lend a hand here to help the gentlemen on board! Somebody say it in French! Up with you!”There was no need for the use of another tongue, for a lantern shed its light down upon them, willing hands were ready, and the Count and Morny scrambled aboard.The next moment the Count was giving orders for a rope to be passed down to the boat.“Make fast, and come on board!” he shouted. “You’ll never get back to-night.”The order came too late, for as he spoke another order was given out by Joe Cross, who had loosed the precarious hold he had with the boat-hook, as he shouted while giving the boat a thrust away—“Now for it, my lads! Pull for all you know!”Almost the next moment Rodd dimly saw that they were clear, and as the men tugged at their oars with all their might he dropped upon his knees in front of stroke, clapped his hands against the oar, and swinging with the man, thrust with all his force.Five minutes of desperate tugging at the oars in the midst of darkness which seemed to rapidly increase. The men had rowed with all their force—not to get back to the schooner, but to reach the brig and one of her ropes that they knew would be thrown to their help; but to Rodd, as he strained his eyes from where he knelt striving to give force to the stroke oar, it was like catching so many glimpses, first of the brig’s side, then of its stern, and then once more it was as if they were standing still in the water and the brig was rushing away.“Steady, my lads! Don’t break your hearts!” cried Joe Cross firmly, his voice ringing clearer out of the black silence. “It aren’t to be done. Mid-stream’s our game. If we try to get ashore we shall be among the branches, capsized in a moment, and—”The sailor did not finish his speech then, but Rodd did to himself, and hot though he was with his exertions, a cold shiver seemed to run through him, as he mentally said—“The crocodiles!”“That’s better, my lads. Just a steady pull, and I’ll keep as I am with the boat-hook. We mustn’t have a capsize.”“What are you going to do, Joe?” cried Rodd.“Don’t know, sir,” said the man gruffly. “Perhaps you can tell me.”“I? No,” cried Rodd.“Ah! That’s awkward,” said the man. “I don’t know what the skipper was about to set us on this job. That’s the worst of being a sailor. They trains us up to ’bey orders directly they’re guv, and we does them, but one never knows how to be right. I oughter ha’ told the old man as this was more’n men could do; ’cause I half thought it were. But then I says to myself, the skipper knows best; and here we are in a nice hole.”“A nice hole!” cried Rodd angrily. “Why, we shall be swept out to sea.”“Looks like it, sir—I mean seems.”“But why not make for the shore, where we could catch hold of some of the overhanging branches?”“I telled you, sir. ’Cause we should be capsized before we had time to wink. Steady, my lads—steady! It’s no use to pull, Mr Rodd; four times as many of us couldn’t stem a stream like this.”“Will they come down after us? Yes, my uncle is sure to.”“Not he, sir. It would be just about mad to try it, and our old man will be so wild at being caught like this that he won’t let him stir. ’Sides that, sir, what are you talking about? How are they to know we have been swept away?”“Because we don’t come back, of course,” cried Rodd angrily.“That won’t do, sir. Skipper knows, of course, after the way we went off, that it’s just impossible.”“But the Count will tell him.”“Too far off for shouting, sir. You take my word for it that the skipper will make up his mind that we are stopping on board the brig till the tide runs slack again. If anything’s done it will be by the Frenchies, and I don’t believe they’ll try.”“Oh, but the Count would. His son would make him.”“No, sir. The Count’s a fine naval officer who has seen service, and he knows too well what he’s about to send a boat’s crew swirling down this river to go nobody knows where. The only folks as can help us is—”“Yes—who?” cried Rodd, for the man broke off in his speech.“Ourselves, sir; and we shall find it precious hard.”“That’s right, Joe,” said one of the other sailors. “Better speak out, mate, and say the worst on it.”“Say it yourselves,” cried Joe Cross roughly.“Yes, speak out,” cried Rodd. “What do you think?”“We can do nothing, sir, but keep her head straight and go down with the tide, doing all we can to keep from being sucked into the shore among the trees.”“But look here, Joe, aren’t we very close in now?” cried Rodd, who had just noticed in the darkness that the sailor he addressed was leaning over the bows and straining his eyes in one particular direction.For answer the man yelled to his messmates to pull with all their might.The oars dipped, but at the second stroke there was a crashing rustling sound of twigs, followed by a sharp crackling and snapping, as they were swept in amongst the pendant branches of some huge forest tree, one bough striking Rodd across the shoulders and holding him as it were fast, so that the boat was being dragged from beneath him.Then there was more grinding of the gunwale of the boat amongst the boughs, the water came swishing in over the side, and directly after the frail vessel partly turned over, with her keel lying sideways to the rushing tide.Then more crackling and rustling amongst the boughs, mingled with shouting from the boat’s crew, and from out of the confusion, and somewhere above him in the pitchy darkness and low-lying night mist, came the voice of Joe Cross—“Now then, all of you! Where away?”“Here!”“Here!”“All right, mate!”“Lend a hand, some one!”“Are you all here?” cried Joe Cross again.“Ay, ay, ay, ay!” came in chorus.“But I don’t hear the young guvnor.”There was silence.“Where’s Mr Rodd?”A moment’s pause, and then—“Mr Rodd! Ahoy!”“Here, Joe, here!” came in half-suffocated tones.“Wheer, my lad?” cried the man excitedly.“Here! Here! Help!”“But where’s yerhere, lad? I can’t see you.—Can any of you? Oh, look alive, some on you! Get hold of the boy anywhere—arms or legs or anything—and hold on like grim death.”There was a sharp rustling of leaves and twigs which pretty well drowned Rodd’s answer—“I’m down here.”“Where’sdown here, my lad? Are you under the boat?”“No, no. Hanging to a bough, with the water up to my chest, and something’s tugging at me to drag me away.”“Oh, a-mussy me!” groaned the sailor. “Why aren’t it to-morrow morning and sun up? Can’t any of you see him?”“No, no, no, no!” came back, almost as dismally as groans.“Well, can’t you feel him, then?”“No.”“I am here, Joe—here!” panted the lad. “Higher up the river than you are. A big branch swept me out of the boat.”“Ah, yes, we went under it,” groaned Joe. “Well, lads, he must be the other side of the tree. Here, where’s that there boat? Can any of you see it?”“No; we are all on us in the tree?”“Well, I don’t suppose you are swimming,” roared Cross savagely. “Do something, some on you! Thinking of nothing but saving your own blessed lives! Are you going to let the poor lad drown?”“Here, coxswain, why don’t you tell us what to do?” snarled one of the men.“How can I,” yelled Joe, “when I don’t know what to do mysen? Oh, don’t I wish that I had got the skipper here! I’d let him have it warm!”“Joe! Joe!” came out of the darkness. “I can’t hold on! I can’t hold on!”“Yah, you young idgit!” roared the sailor. “You must!”“I can’t, Joe—I can’t!” cried Rodd faintly, and there was a gurgling sputtering sound as if the water had washed over him.“Oh–h!” groaned Joe. “Don’t I tell you you must! Hold on by your arms and legs—your eyelids. Stick your teeth into the branch. We are a-coming, my lad.—Oh my! what a lie!” he muttered. Then aloud, and in a despairing tone, “Can any one of you get up again’ the stream to where he is?”“No!” came in a deep murmur. “If we go down we shall be washed away.”“Same here,” groaned Joe. “I’m a-holding on with the water right up to the middle, and just about ready to be washed off. I can’t stir. Oh, do one of you try and save the poor dear lad! I wish I was dead, I do!”“Joe!” came faintly.“Ay, ay, my lad!”“Tell Uncle Paul—”The words ended in a half-suffocated wailing cry, and almost the next moment there was a tremendous splashing of water, and the snapping of a good-sized branch, followed by sounds as of a struggle going on upon the surface of the rushing stream as it lapped and hissed amongst the tangled boughs and twigs.“Hold hard!” yelled Joe. “Anywhere.—Got him, boys—urrrrr!—”It was as if some savage beast had suddenly seized its prey. Then there was a loud panting and more crackling as of branches giving way, and directly after, in answer to a volley of inquiries, Joe Cross panted out—“Yes, I’ve got him, my lads, and he’s got his teeth into me; but I don’t know how long we can hold on.”“You must hold on, Joe!” shouted a voice.“Stick to him, messmate! I’m a-trying to get to you.”There was more crackling in the darkness, and a peculiar subdued sound as of men panting after running hard; but it was only the hard breathing of excitement.“Have you got him still, Joe?” came in gasps.“Yes, my lad, but he’s awful still and I don’t know that he aren’t drowned.—No, he aren’t, for he’s got his teeth into my shoulder, and he’s gripping hard. But the water keeps washing right up into my ear.”“Hoist him up a little higher,” panted the other speaker.“How can I? I’ve got my arm round him, but if I stir it means let go. What are you doing, mate?”“Trying to get down to you, but as soon as I stir the bough begins to crack.”“Steady, mate, steady! I can’t see you, but I can hear, and if you come down on us we are gone. Here, I say, it will be hours before it’s morning, won’t it?”There was a groan in reply—a big groan formed by several voices in unison.“But how long will it be before, the tide goes down and leaves us?”There was no reply, and a dead silence fell upon the occupants clinging to different portions of the tree, all of whom had managed with the strength and activity of sailors to drag themselves up beyond the reach of the water and at varying distances from where Joe Cross clung with one messmate hanging just above his head.“Well, look here, messmates,” said Joe at last, “it’s no use to make the worst on it. I’ve got the young skipper all right, and he’s growing more lively, for he just give a kick. Now who’s this ’ere? It’s you, Harry Briggs, aren’t it?”“Ay, ay, mate; me and water, for I swallowed a lot before I got out of it.”“Now, look here; how are you holding on?”“Hanging down’ards, my lad, with my hind legs tied in a knot round a big bough; and I keep on trying to get hold of you by the scruff, but I can’t quite reach.”“Why, that’s a-hinging like the bees used to do outside my old mother’s skep. Well, you mustn’t let go, my lad, else down you come.”“Well, I know that, mate,” growled the man. “But I say, can’t you reach up to my hands?”“Yah! No!” growled Joe. “I’ve only got two. Can’t you reach down a little further and get hold of my ears, or something?”“My arms aren’t spy-glasses, and they won’t reach within a foot of you. Can any of you swarm out above us here?”“No—no—no!” came in voice after voice, from points that were evidently fairly distant.“Oh!” groaned the sailor addressed as Harry. “Fust time in my blessed life I ever wished I was a ’Merican monkey.”“What for, mate?” panted Joe.“So as to make fast round this ’ere branch with my tail.”“Joe! Joe!” came in a low hoarse tone. “Where am I!”“Well, you are here, my lad; but don’t let go with your teeth. Take another good fast hold, but more outside like. Keep to the wool of the jumper—if you can.”“Hah! I recollect now. We are in the water, and I have got hold of you.”“That’s right, my lad, and I’d say take a good fast holt of my hair, only Ikey Gregg scissored it off so short when it turned so hot that there’s nothing to hold. But can you hyste yourself up a bit higher?”“I’ll try, Joe; but the water drags at me so. But, Joe, what are you holding on to?”“What they’d call a arm of the tree, sir.”“But if I try to climb up you shan’t I drag you loose?”“Oh, I’m no consequence, my lad. If I’m washed off I shall get hold again somewheres. Never you mind me. There’s Harry Briggs up aloft a-reaching down a couple of his hands. If you feel you’ve got stuff enough in you.—Take your time over it, my lad—you see if you can’t swarm a bit up me and then stretch up and think you are at home trying to pick apples, till Harry gets a big grip of your wristies; and then you ought to be able to swarm up him. Now then, do you think you can try?”“Yes, Joe; I think so,” panted the boy. “That’s right, my lad. I’d give you a lift, only I can’t, for I’m in rotten anchorage, and we mustn’t get adrift.”About a minute passed, in which little was heard but the whishing of the water through the leaves and twigs, and the sound of hard breathing. Then Joe spoke again—“I don’t want to hurry you, my lad, but if you think you can manage it I’d say, begin.”“I’m ready now, Joe,” said the boy faintly. “But do you think you can hold on?”“Aren’t got time to think, my lad. You go on and do it. That’s your job, and don’t you think as it’s a hard ’un. Just you fancy the doctor’s yonder getting anxious about you, and then—up you goes.”“Yes, Joe,” panted Rodd.“And once you get hold of Harry Briggs’ hands he’ll draw you up a bit. He’s a-hinging down like one of them there baboons, tail up’ards. Then, once he hystes you a bit, you get a good grip of him with your teeth anywhere that comes first. He won’t mind. That’ll set your hands free, and then up you goes bit by bit till you gets right into the tree.”“Yes, Joe; and then?”“Well, my lad, then I’d set down striddling and have a rest.”“Below there! Ready!” cried Briggs. “I can’t reach no further, youngster, but I think if you can climb up and grip we might manage it.”“Yes! Coming!” cried Rodd.And then no one saw, and afterwards Rodd could hardly tell how he managed it, but with the water pressing him closer as he clung face to face with the partially submerged coxswain, he managed to scramble higher, clinging with arms and legs, till he occupied a hazardous position astride of the sailor’s shoulder, holding on with his left hand and reaching up with his right, snatching for a few moments at nothing.“Where are you, my lad?” came from above.“Here! Here!” panted Rodd, and then, “Ah, it’s of no use!”As he spoke he felt himself going over, but at that moment his fingers touched the sleeve of a soft clinging jersey, a set of fingers gripped hard at his arm, and in a supreme effort he loosened his other hand, made a snatch, and then began swinging gently to and fro till another hand from above closed upon his jacket and lightened the strain.“Got you, my lad!” came from overhead. “Now look here; I’m not going to hyste you up, ’cause I can’t, but I am going to swing you back’ards and for’ards like a pendulo till you can touch this ’ere bough where I am hanging, and then go on till you can get your legs round it and hold fast. Understand?”“Yes,” panted Rodd.“Now then. Belay, and when you get hold you shout.”It was the work of an acrobat, such as he would have achieved in doubt and despair.The sailor began swinging the boy to and fro, to and fro, with more and more force, till Rodd felt his legs go crashing in amongst the thick twigs of the great bough that was drawn down by the weight of the two upon it a good deal below the horizontal.“Harder!” he cried, as he swung back, and then as his legs went well in again he felt that a thick portion was passing between his knees, and thrusting forward his feet with all his might he forced them upwards and directly afterwards passed them one across the other in a desperate grip which left him dragging on the sailor’s hands.“Fast, my lad?”“Yes.”“Can you hold on?”“Yes.”“Then good luck to you!” cried the sailor, as, relieved of the boy’s weight, he too swung head downwards for a moment or two, then with a quick effort wrenched himself upwards, got hold of the branch with both hands, and after hanging like a sloth for a few moments, succeeded in dragging himself upon the bough, which all the while was swaying heavily up and down and threatening to shake Rodd from where he hung, but at the same time inciting him so to fresh desperate action, that with all a boy’s activity he too had succeeded in perching himself astride of the branch.“All right, my lad?” cried Briggs.“Ye–es!” came gaspingly.“Then you wait a bit and get your wind, my lad.—Joe Cross! Ahoy!” he yelled, as if his messmate were half-a-mile away.“Right ho!” came from below. “Where’s the boy?”“Here, Joe—here!” shouted Rodd, the sound of the man’s voice seeming to send energy through him.“Hah–h–h!” came from the sailor, and directly after from different parts of the tree there was a cheer.“Now then, what about you, matey?” shouted Briggs.“Well, I dunno yet, my lad; I’m just going to try and shape it round. I want to know where some of the others are, and whether if I let go I couldn’t manage to make a scramble and swim so as to join a mate.”“No, no, no!” came in chorus. “Don’t try it, lad. Aren’t you safe where you are?”“Well, I don’t know about being safe,” replied the sailor. “Mebbe I could hold on, but here’s the water up to my chesty; and don’t make a row, or you’ll be letting some of those crocs know where I am. Look here, Mr Rodd, sir; are you all right?”“Yes, Joe; I can sit here as long as I like.—That is,” he added to himself, “if the branch doesn’t break.”“Well, that’s a comfort, sir. And what about you, Harry Briggs?”“Well, I’m all right, mate; only a bit wet.”“Wet! You should feel me!” cried Cross, quite jocularly. “How about the rest on you?”“Oh, we are up aloft here in the dark, mate,” said one of the men. “I dunno as we should hurt so long as we didn’t fall asleep.”“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, mates,” said Cross. “You might catch cold. You hang yourselves out as wide as you can, so as to get dry.”“But look here, Joe Cross,” shouted Rodd, who was rapidly recovering his spirits, “you mustn’t sit there in the water. Can’t you manage to climb up?”“Oh yes, sir, I can climb up easy enough, only it don’t seem to me as there’s anything to climb.”“But doesn’t the branch you are sitting on go right up to the tree?”“No, sir; it goes right down into it, and I’m sitting in a sort of fork, like a dicky bird as has been picking out a handy place for its nest.”“Then what are you going to try to do?”“Nothing, sir, but think.”“Think?”“Yes, sir—about what I’m going to say to the skipper if ever we gets back.”“Why, what can you say?”“That’s what I want to know, sir. I know what he’ll say to me. He’ll say, Look here, my lad, you were coxswain; I want to know what you have done with my gig.”“Ah, the boat!” said Rodd. “Do any of you know what’s become of the boat?”“I don’t,” said Briggs.“Oh, she’s half-way to South Ameriky by this time, sir,” said Joe, “and I shall get all the credit of having lost her.”“Never mind about the boat, Joe.”“Well, sir, if you talk like that, I don’t. But it’s the skipper who will mind.”“It’s nothing to do with him, Joe. It’s uncle’s boat; and it wasn’t your fault.”“Thank you, sir. That’s a bit comforting like, and warms one up a bit; but if it’s all the same to you I’d raither not talk quite so much, for I don’t know as crocs can hear, but if they can it mightn’t be pleasant. Well, my lads, just another word; we have got to make the best of it and wait for daylight, and I suppose by that time the tide will have gone right down, and some on you will be getting dry.”There was silence then, and the men sat holding on to their precarious perches, listening to an occasional sound from the river or the shore, loud splashings right away out in the direction of what they supposed to be the main current, and an occasional trumpeting wail or shriek from the forest—sounds that chilled and produced blood-curdling sensations at the first, but to which the men became more and more accustomed as the hours slowly glided on.“Look here,” said Joe Cross, at last, “because I said I didn’t want to talk, that wasn’t meant for you who are all right up above the water. It’s bad enough to be keeping a watch like this on a dark night, but that is no reason why you chaps shouldn’t tell stories and talk and say something to cheer Mr Rodd up a bit. He had about the worst of it, swep’ out of the boat as he was. So let go, some on you. You’ve got to do something, as you can’t go to sleep. But I tell you one thing; you chaps are all much better off than I am. I shan’t fall out of my bunk on the top of any of you. But look here, Harry Briggs, you always want a lot of stirring up before one can get you to move. Now then; you have got a bit of pipe of your own. Sing us a song. Good cheery one, with a chorus—one that Mr Rodd can pick up and chime in. Now then, let go.”“Who’s a-going to sing with the water dripping down out of his toes?”“Why, you, mate,” cried Joe. “There, get on with you. You chaps as knows the best songs always wants the most stirring up, pretending to be bashful, when you want to begin all the time!”“I tell you I don’t, mate. I’m too cold.”“Then heave ahead, and that’ll warm you up. You tell him he is to sing, Mr Rodd, sir. You’re skipper now, and he must obey orders. It’ll do us all good.”“Well,” said Rodd, “it doesn’t seem a very cheerful time to ask people to sing in the dark; but perhaps it will brighten us all up.”“Ay, ay, sir!” came from the rest.“Am I to, Mr Rodd?” said the man appealingly; and after a little more pressing he struck up in a good musical tenor the old-fashioned sea song of “The Mermaid,” with its refrain of—“We jolly sailor boys were up, up aloft,And the land lubbers lying down below, below, below,And the land lubbers lying down below!”right on through the several verses, telling of the sailors’ superstition regarding its being unlucky to see a mermaid with a comb and a glass in her hand, when starting upon a voyage, right on to the piteous cry of the sailor boy about his mother in Portsmouth town, and how that night she would weep for him, till the song ended with the account of how the ship went down and was sunk in the bottom of the sea.It was a wild sad air, sung there in the branches of that tree amidst the darkness and night mist, and in spite of a certain beauty in the melody the singer’s voice assumed a more and more saddened tone, till he finished with the water seeming to hiss more loudly through the lower branches and the inundated trunks around, and then there was a sharp slapping noise on the surface of the stream that might very well have been taken for plaudits.Then there was a strange braying sound like a weirdly discordant fit of laughter; and then perfect silence, with the darkness more profound than ever.“I’m blessed!” came at last from Joe. “Hark at him, Mr Rodd. He calls hisself a messmate! Ast him, I did, to sing us a song to cheer us up. Why, it was bad enough to play for a monkey’s funeral march. It’s all very well for you others to join in your chorus about jolly sailor boys sitting up aloft, but what about poor me sitting all the time in a cold hipsy bath, as they calls it in hospitals, expecting every moment to feel the young crocs a-tackling my toes? Why, it’s enough to make a fellow call out for a clean pocket-handkerchy. Here, some on you, set to and spin us a yarn to take the taste of that out of our mouths.”
“Put your backs into it, my lads,” cried Joe Cross, almost fiercely. “Steady! Steady all, and look out that you don’t have a smash. Pull! Hard! Here, I shall be tugged out of the boat!”
For it seemed almost directly after that the dimly-seen hull of the brig rose up out of the darkness close at hand, while from where he knelt—fortunately for himself—the coxswain felt his arms being jerked out of their sockets as he caught with the boat-hook at the brig’s main chains. “Stand by there!” he roared, as he held on. “Lend a hand here to help the gentlemen on board! Somebody say it in French! Up with you!”
There was no need for the use of another tongue, for a lantern shed its light down upon them, willing hands were ready, and the Count and Morny scrambled aboard.
The next moment the Count was giving orders for a rope to be passed down to the boat.
“Make fast, and come on board!” he shouted. “You’ll never get back to-night.”
The order came too late, for as he spoke another order was given out by Joe Cross, who had loosed the precarious hold he had with the boat-hook, as he shouted while giving the boat a thrust away—
“Now for it, my lads! Pull for all you know!”
Almost the next moment Rodd dimly saw that they were clear, and as the men tugged at their oars with all their might he dropped upon his knees in front of stroke, clapped his hands against the oar, and swinging with the man, thrust with all his force.
Five minutes of desperate tugging at the oars in the midst of darkness which seemed to rapidly increase. The men had rowed with all their force—not to get back to the schooner, but to reach the brig and one of her ropes that they knew would be thrown to their help; but to Rodd, as he strained his eyes from where he knelt striving to give force to the stroke oar, it was like catching so many glimpses, first of the brig’s side, then of its stern, and then once more it was as if they were standing still in the water and the brig was rushing away.
“Steady, my lads! Don’t break your hearts!” cried Joe Cross firmly, his voice ringing clearer out of the black silence. “It aren’t to be done. Mid-stream’s our game. If we try to get ashore we shall be among the branches, capsized in a moment, and—”
The sailor did not finish his speech then, but Rodd did to himself, and hot though he was with his exertions, a cold shiver seemed to run through him, as he mentally said—
“The crocodiles!”
“That’s better, my lads. Just a steady pull, and I’ll keep as I am with the boat-hook. We mustn’t have a capsize.”
“What are you going to do, Joe?” cried Rodd.
“Don’t know, sir,” said the man gruffly. “Perhaps you can tell me.”
“I? No,” cried Rodd.
“Ah! That’s awkward,” said the man. “I don’t know what the skipper was about to set us on this job. That’s the worst of being a sailor. They trains us up to ’bey orders directly they’re guv, and we does them, but one never knows how to be right. I oughter ha’ told the old man as this was more’n men could do; ’cause I half thought it were. But then I says to myself, the skipper knows best; and here we are in a nice hole.”
“A nice hole!” cried Rodd angrily. “Why, we shall be swept out to sea.”
“Looks like it, sir—I mean seems.”
“But why not make for the shore, where we could catch hold of some of the overhanging branches?”
“I telled you, sir. ’Cause we should be capsized before we had time to wink. Steady, my lads—steady! It’s no use to pull, Mr Rodd; four times as many of us couldn’t stem a stream like this.”
“Will they come down after us? Yes, my uncle is sure to.”
“Not he, sir. It would be just about mad to try it, and our old man will be so wild at being caught like this that he won’t let him stir. ’Sides that, sir, what are you talking about? How are they to know we have been swept away?”
“Because we don’t come back, of course,” cried Rodd angrily.
“That won’t do, sir. Skipper knows, of course, after the way we went off, that it’s just impossible.”
“But the Count will tell him.”
“Too far off for shouting, sir. You take my word for it that the skipper will make up his mind that we are stopping on board the brig till the tide runs slack again. If anything’s done it will be by the Frenchies, and I don’t believe they’ll try.”
“Oh, but the Count would. His son would make him.”
“No, sir. The Count’s a fine naval officer who has seen service, and he knows too well what he’s about to send a boat’s crew swirling down this river to go nobody knows where. The only folks as can help us is—”
“Yes—who?” cried Rodd, for the man broke off in his speech.
“Ourselves, sir; and we shall find it precious hard.”
“That’s right, Joe,” said one of the other sailors. “Better speak out, mate, and say the worst on it.”
“Say it yourselves,” cried Joe Cross roughly.
“Yes, speak out,” cried Rodd. “What do you think?”
“We can do nothing, sir, but keep her head straight and go down with the tide, doing all we can to keep from being sucked into the shore among the trees.”
“But look here, Joe, aren’t we very close in now?” cried Rodd, who had just noticed in the darkness that the sailor he addressed was leaning over the bows and straining his eyes in one particular direction.
For answer the man yelled to his messmates to pull with all their might.
The oars dipped, but at the second stroke there was a crashing rustling sound of twigs, followed by a sharp crackling and snapping, as they were swept in amongst the pendant branches of some huge forest tree, one bough striking Rodd across the shoulders and holding him as it were fast, so that the boat was being dragged from beneath him.
Then there was more grinding of the gunwale of the boat amongst the boughs, the water came swishing in over the side, and directly after the frail vessel partly turned over, with her keel lying sideways to the rushing tide.
Then more crackling and rustling amongst the boughs, mingled with shouting from the boat’s crew, and from out of the confusion, and somewhere above him in the pitchy darkness and low-lying night mist, came the voice of Joe Cross—
“Now then, all of you! Where away?”
“Here!”
“Here!”
“All right, mate!”
“Lend a hand, some one!”
“Are you all here?” cried Joe Cross again.
“Ay, ay, ay, ay!” came in chorus.
“But I don’t hear the young guvnor.”
There was silence.
“Where’s Mr Rodd?”
A moment’s pause, and then—
“Mr Rodd! Ahoy!”
“Here, Joe, here!” came in half-suffocated tones.
“Wheer, my lad?” cried the man excitedly.
“Here! Here! Help!”
“But where’s yerhere, lad? I can’t see you.—Can any of you? Oh, look alive, some on you! Get hold of the boy anywhere—arms or legs or anything—and hold on like grim death.”
There was a sharp rustling of leaves and twigs which pretty well drowned Rodd’s answer—
“I’m down here.”
“Where’sdown here, my lad? Are you under the boat?”
“No, no. Hanging to a bough, with the water up to my chest, and something’s tugging at me to drag me away.”
“Oh, a-mussy me!” groaned the sailor. “Why aren’t it to-morrow morning and sun up? Can’t any of you see him?”
“No, no, no, no!” came back, almost as dismally as groans.
“Well, can’t you feel him, then?”
“No.”
“I am here, Joe—here!” panted the lad. “Higher up the river than you are. A big branch swept me out of the boat.”
“Ah, yes, we went under it,” groaned Joe. “Well, lads, he must be the other side of the tree. Here, where’s that there boat? Can any of you see it?”
“No; we are all on us in the tree?”
“Well, I don’t suppose you are swimming,” roared Cross savagely. “Do something, some on you! Thinking of nothing but saving your own blessed lives! Are you going to let the poor lad drown?”
“Here, coxswain, why don’t you tell us what to do?” snarled one of the men.
“How can I,” yelled Joe, “when I don’t know what to do mysen? Oh, don’t I wish that I had got the skipper here! I’d let him have it warm!”
“Joe! Joe!” came out of the darkness. “I can’t hold on! I can’t hold on!”
“Yah, you young idgit!” roared the sailor. “You must!”
“I can’t, Joe—I can’t!” cried Rodd faintly, and there was a gurgling sputtering sound as if the water had washed over him.
“Oh–h!” groaned Joe. “Don’t I tell you you must! Hold on by your arms and legs—your eyelids. Stick your teeth into the branch. We are a-coming, my lad.—Oh my! what a lie!” he muttered. Then aloud, and in a despairing tone, “Can any one of you get up again’ the stream to where he is?”
“No!” came in a deep murmur. “If we go down we shall be washed away.”
“Same here,” groaned Joe. “I’m a-holding on with the water right up to the middle, and just about ready to be washed off. I can’t stir. Oh, do one of you try and save the poor dear lad! I wish I was dead, I do!”
“Joe!” came faintly.
“Ay, ay, my lad!”
“Tell Uncle Paul—”
The words ended in a half-suffocated wailing cry, and almost the next moment there was a tremendous splashing of water, and the snapping of a good-sized branch, followed by sounds as of a struggle going on upon the surface of the rushing stream as it lapped and hissed amongst the tangled boughs and twigs.
“Hold hard!” yelled Joe. “Anywhere.—Got him, boys—urrrrr!—”
It was as if some savage beast had suddenly seized its prey. Then there was a loud panting and more crackling as of branches giving way, and directly after, in answer to a volley of inquiries, Joe Cross panted out—
“Yes, I’ve got him, my lads, and he’s got his teeth into me; but I don’t know how long we can hold on.”
“You must hold on, Joe!” shouted a voice.
“Stick to him, messmate! I’m a-trying to get to you.”
There was more crackling in the darkness, and a peculiar subdued sound as of men panting after running hard; but it was only the hard breathing of excitement.
“Have you got him still, Joe?” came in gasps.
“Yes, my lad, but he’s awful still and I don’t know that he aren’t drowned.—No, he aren’t, for he’s got his teeth into my shoulder, and he’s gripping hard. But the water keeps washing right up into my ear.”
“Hoist him up a little higher,” panted the other speaker.
“How can I? I’ve got my arm round him, but if I stir it means let go. What are you doing, mate?”
“Trying to get down to you, but as soon as I stir the bough begins to crack.”
“Steady, mate, steady! I can’t see you, but I can hear, and if you come down on us we are gone. Here, I say, it will be hours before it’s morning, won’t it?”
There was a groan in reply—a big groan formed by several voices in unison.
“But how long will it be before, the tide goes down and leaves us?”
There was no reply, and a dead silence fell upon the occupants clinging to different portions of the tree, all of whom had managed with the strength and activity of sailors to drag themselves up beyond the reach of the water and at varying distances from where Joe Cross clung with one messmate hanging just above his head.
“Well, look here, messmates,” said Joe at last, “it’s no use to make the worst on it. I’ve got the young skipper all right, and he’s growing more lively, for he just give a kick. Now who’s this ’ere? It’s you, Harry Briggs, aren’t it?”
“Ay, ay, mate; me and water, for I swallowed a lot before I got out of it.”
“Now, look here; how are you holding on?”
“Hanging down’ards, my lad, with my hind legs tied in a knot round a big bough; and I keep on trying to get hold of you by the scruff, but I can’t quite reach.”
“Why, that’s a-hinging like the bees used to do outside my old mother’s skep. Well, you mustn’t let go, my lad, else down you come.”
“Well, I know that, mate,” growled the man. “But I say, can’t you reach up to my hands?”
“Yah! No!” growled Joe. “I’ve only got two. Can’t you reach down a little further and get hold of my ears, or something?”
“My arms aren’t spy-glasses, and they won’t reach within a foot of you. Can any of you swarm out above us here?”
“No—no—no!” came in voice after voice, from points that were evidently fairly distant.
“Oh!” groaned the sailor addressed as Harry. “Fust time in my blessed life I ever wished I was a ’Merican monkey.”
“What for, mate?” panted Joe.
“So as to make fast round this ’ere branch with my tail.”
“Joe! Joe!” came in a low hoarse tone. “Where am I!”
“Well, you are here, my lad; but don’t let go with your teeth. Take another good fast hold, but more outside like. Keep to the wool of the jumper—if you can.”
“Hah! I recollect now. We are in the water, and I have got hold of you.”
“That’s right, my lad, and I’d say take a good fast holt of my hair, only Ikey Gregg scissored it off so short when it turned so hot that there’s nothing to hold. But can you hyste yourself up a bit higher?”
“I’ll try, Joe; but the water drags at me so. But, Joe, what are you holding on to?”
“What they’d call a arm of the tree, sir.”
“But if I try to climb up you shan’t I drag you loose?”
“Oh, I’m no consequence, my lad. If I’m washed off I shall get hold again somewheres. Never you mind me. There’s Harry Briggs up aloft a-reaching down a couple of his hands. If you feel you’ve got stuff enough in you.—Take your time over it, my lad—you see if you can’t swarm a bit up me and then stretch up and think you are at home trying to pick apples, till Harry gets a big grip of your wristies; and then you ought to be able to swarm up him. Now then, do you think you can try?”
“Yes, Joe; I think so,” panted the boy. “That’s right, my lad. I’d give you a lift, only I can’t, for I’m in rotten anchorage, and we mustn’t get adrift.”
About a minute passed, in which little was heard but the whishing of the water through the leaves and twigs, and the sound of hard breathing. Then Joe spoke again—
“I don’t want to hurry you, my lad, but if you think you can manage it I’d say, begin.”
“I’m ready now, Joe,” said the boy faintly. “But do you think you can hold on?”
“Aren’t got time to think, my lad. You go on and do it. That’s your job, and don’t you think as it’s a hard ’un. Just you fancy the doctor’s yonder getting anxious about you, and then—up you goes.”
“Yes, Joe,” panted Rodd.
“And once you get hold of Harry Briggs’ hands he’ll draw you up a bit. He’s a-hinging down like one of them there baboons, tail up’ards. Then, once he hystes you a bit, you get a good grip of him with your teeth anywhere that comes first. He won’t mind. That’ll set your hands free, and then up you goes bit by bit till you gets right into the tree.”
“Yes, Joe; and then?”
“Well, my lad, then I’d set down striddling and have a rest.”
“Below there! Ready!” cried Briggs. “I can’t reach no further, youngster, but I think if you can climb up and grip we might manage it.”
“Yes! Coming!” cried Rodd.
And then no one saw, and afterwards Rodd could hardly tell how he managed it, but with the water pressing him closer as he clung face to face with the partially submerged coxswain, he managed to scramble higher, clinging with arms and legs, till he occupied a hazardous position astride of the sailor’s shoulder, holding on with his left hand and reaching up with his right, snatching for a few moments at nothing.
“Where are you, my lad?” came from above.
“Here! Here!” panted Rodd, and then, “Ah, it’s of no use!”
As he spoke he felt himself going over, but at that moment his fingers touched the sleeve of a soft clinging jersey, a set of fingers gripped hard at his arm, and in a supreme effort he loosened his other hand, made a snatch, and then began swinging gently to and fro till another hand from above closed upon his jacket and lightened the strain.
“Got you, my lad!” came from overhead. “Now look here; I’m not going to hyste you up, ’cause I can’t, but I am going to swing you back’ards and for’ards like a pendulo till you can touch this ’ere bough where I am hanging, and then go on till you can get your legs round it and hold fast. Understand?”
“Yes,” panted Rodd.
“Now then. Belay, and when you get hold you shout.”
It was the work of an acrobat, such as he would have achieved in doubt and despair.
The sailor began swinging the boy to and fro, to and fro, with more and more force, till Rodd felt his legs go crashing in amongst the thick twigs of the great bough that was drawn down by the weight of the two upon it a good deal below the horizontal.
“Harder!” he cried, as he swung back, and then as his legs went well in again he felt that a thick portion was passing between his knees, and thrusting forward his feet with all his might he forced them upwards and directly afterwards passed them one across the other in a desperate grip which left him dragging on the sailor’s hands.
“Fast, my lad?”
“Yes.”
“Can you hold on?”
“Yes.”
“Then good luck to you!” cried the sailor, as, relieved of the boy’s weight, he too swung head downwards for a moment or two, then with a quick effort wrenched himself upwards, got hold of the branch with both hands, and after hanging like a sloth for a few moments, succeeded in dragging himself upon the bough, which all the while was swaying heavily up and down and threatening to shake Rodd from where he hung, but at the same time inciting him so to fresh desperate action, that with all a boy’s activity he too had succeeded in perching himself astride of the branch.
“All right, my lad?” cried Briggs.
“Ye–es!” came gaspingly.
“Then you wait a bit and get your wind, my lad.—Joe Cross! Ahoy!” he yelled, as if his messmate were half-a-mile away.
“Right ho!” came from below. “Where’s the boy?”
“Here, Joe—here!” shouted Rodd, the sound of the man’s voice seeming to send energy through him.
“Hah–h–h!” came from the sailor, and directly after from different parts of the tree there was a cheer.
“Now then, what about you, matey?” shouted Briggs.
“Well, I dunno yet, my lad; I’m just going to try and shape it round. I want to know where some of the others are, and whether if I let go I couldn’t manage to make a scramble and swim so as to join a mate.”
“No, no, no!” came in chorus. “Don’t try it, lad. Aren’t you safe where you are?”
“Well, I don’t know about being safe,” replied the sailor. “Mebbe I could hold on, but here’s the water up to my chesty; and don’t make a row, or you’ll be letting some of those crocs know where I am. Look here, Mr Rodd, sir; are you all right?”
“Yes, Joe; I can sit here as long as I like.—That is,” he added to himself, “if the branch doesn’t break.”
“Well, that’s a comfort, sir. And what about you, Harry Briggs?”
“Well, I’m all right, mate; only a bit wet.”
“Wet! You should feel me!” cried Cross, quite jocularly. “How about the rest on you?”
“Oh, we are up aloft here in the dark, mate,” said one of the men. “I dunno as we should hurt so long as we didn’t fall asleep.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, mates,” said Cross. “You might catch cold. You hang yourselves out as wide as you can, so as to get dry.”
“But look here, Joe Cross,” shouted Rodd, who was rapidly recovering his spirits, “you mustn’t sit there in the water. Can’t you manage to climb up?”
“Oh yes, sir, I can climb up easy enough, only it don’t seem to me as there’s anything to climb.”
“But doesn’t the branch you are sitting on go right up to the tree?”
“No, sir; it goes right down into it, and I’m sitting in a sort of fork, like a dicky bird as has been picking out a handy place for its nest.”
“Then what are you going to try to do?”
“Nothing, sir, but think.”
“Think?”
“Yes, sir—about what I’m going to say to the skipper if ever we gets back.”
“Why, what can you say?”
“That’s what I want to know, sir. I know what he’ll say to me. He’ll say, Look here, my lad, you were coxswain; I want to know what you have done with my gig.”
“Ah, the boat!” said Rodd. “Do any of you know what’s become of the boat?”
“I don’t,” said Briggs.
“Oh, she’s half-way to South Ameriky by this time, sir,” said Joe, “and I shall get all the credit of having lost her.”
“Never mind about the boat, Joe.”
“Well, sir, if you talk like that, I don’t. But it’s the skipper who will mind.”
“It’s nothing to do with him, Joe. It’s uncle’s boat; and it wasn’t your fault.”
“Thank you, sir. That’s a bit comforting like, and warms one up a bit; but if it’s all the same to you I’d raither not talk quite so much, for I don’t know as crocs can hear, but if they can it mightn’t be pleasant. Well, my lads, just another word; we have got to make the best of it and wait for daylight, and I suppose by that time the tide will have gone right down, and some on you will be getting dry.”
There was silence then, and the men sat holding on to their precarious perches, listening to an occasional sound from the river or the shore, loud splashings right away out in the direction of what they supposed to be the main current, and an occasional trumpeting wail or shriek from the forest—sounds that chilled and produced blood-curdling sensations at the first, but to which the men became more and more accustomed as the hours slowly glided on.
“Look here,” said Joe Cross, at last, “because I said I didn’t want to talk, that wasn’t meant for you who are all right up above the water. It’s bad enough to be keeping a watch like this on a dark night, but that is no reason why you chaps shouldn’t tell stories and talk and say something to cheer Mr Rodd up a bit. He had about the worst of it, swep’ out of the boat as he was. So let go, some on you. You’ve got to do something, as you can’t go to sleep. But I tell you one thing; you chaps are all much better off than I am. I shan’t fall out of my bunk on the top of any of you. But look here, Harry Briggs, you always want a lot of stirring up before one can get you to move. Now then; you have got a bit of pipe of your own. Sing us a song. Good cheery one, with a chorus—one that Mr Rodd can pick up and chime in. Now then, let go.”
“Who’s a-going to sing with the water dripping down out of his toes?”
“Why, you, mate,” cried Joe. “There, get on with you. You chaps as knows the best songs always wants the most stirring up, pretending to be bashful, when you want to begin all the time!”
“I tell you I don’t, mate. I’m too cold.”
“Then heave ahead, and that’ll warm you up. You tell him he is to sing, Mr Rodd, sir. You’re skipper now, and he must obey orders. It’ll do us all good.”
“Well,” said Rodd, “it doesn’t seem a very cheerful time to ask people to sing in the dark; but perhaps it will brighten us all up.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” came from the rest.
“Am I to, Mr Rodd?” said the man appealingly; and after a little more pressing he struck up in a good musical tenor the old-fashioned sea song of “The Mermaid,” with its refrain of—
“We jolly sailor boys were up, up aloft,And the land lubbers lying down below, below, below,And the land lubbers lying down below!”
“We jolly sailor boys were up, up aloft,And the land lubbers lying down below, below, below,And the land lubbers lying down below!”
right on through the several verses, telling of the sailors’ superstition regarding its being unlucky to see a mermaid with a comb and a glass in her hand, when starting upon a voyage, right on to the piteous cry of the sailor boy about his mother in Portsmouth town, and how that night she would weep for him, till the song ended with the account of how the ship went down and was sunk in the bottom of the sea.
It was a wild sad air, sung there in the branches of that tree amidst the darkness and night mist, and in spite of a certain beauty in the melody the singer’s voice assumed a more and more saddened tone, till he finished with the water seeming to hiss more loudly through the lower branches and the inundated trunks around, and then there was a sharp slapping noise on the surface of the stream that might very well have been taken for plaudits.
Then there was a strange braying sound like a weirdly discordant fit of laughter; and then perfect silence, with the darkness more profound than ever.
“I’m blessed!” came at last from Joe. “Hark at him, Mr Rodd. He calls hisself a messmate! Ast him, I did, to sing us a song to cheer us up. Why, it was bad enough to play for a monkey’s funeral march. It’s all very well for you others to join in your chorus about jolly sailor boys sitting up aloft, but what about poor me sitting all the time in a cold hipsy bath, as they calls it in hospitals, expecting every moment to feel the young crocs a-tackling my toes? Why, it’s enough to make a fellow call out for a clean pocket-handkerchy. Here, some on you, set to and spin us a yarn to take the taste of that out of our mouths.”
Chapter Thirty Six.The Doctor prescribes.And so that awful night wore on, one story bringing forth another, and the spinning of one yarn being followed by the spinning of one perhaps longer.It was anything to relieve the terrible tedium and beguile their thoughts from the peril in which they were placed. The lapse of time was discussed, and the possibility of the slackening of the furious flow of the falling river so that a boat might come down in search of the unfortunates, but to a man all came to the conclusion that nothing could be expected until daylight, and that they must bear their fate as best they might.The most cheerful thing that fell to their lot during the weary hours was the announcement made from time to time by Joe Cross, that the water was sinking a little lower and a little lower, so that he had room to hope that after a while he too would be able to, as he put it, drip himself dry.But the monotony was terrible, and the morning seemed as if it would never come. For it was far different from being in the temperate region of the world, where in the summer months the darkness was slow to come and was succeeded by a very early dawn. There in that tropical southern land they were where the twenty-four-hours day was pretty equally divided into light and darkness, with scarcely any twilight to soften down the division.But still as everything comes to those who wait, so it was there, and Joe Cross announced at last that he was sitting quite clear of the water, and therefore, as he judged it, they had not very much longer to wait before it would be day.But he was wrong. What seemed to be an interminable time elapsed before the watchers could see for certain that a faint light seemed to be piercing the dense grey mist that covered the river. But this did at last become a certainty.Before long, on one side, grey and grim-looking beneath a heavy mist, the great river could be seen gliding steadily along, while away to their right rose the primeval forest, rising as it were out of a sea of shadow.The change came quickly then through a rapid twilight to the bright rays of the sunshine, which seemed to attack the river mist, piercing it through and through, routing it, and sending it in clouds rolling along the stream, while, now glistening and muddy, the banks showed out beyond the trees amidst which the huge monarch in which they had taken refuge stood towering almost alone.“Why, we must have come inshore for some distance last night,” cried Rodd, in wonder.“Ay, my lad. Banks flooded. High tide perhaps,” said Joe bluffly. “Well, the sooner we gets down into this mud and stretches our legs the better; and if they don’t come down in the boats, how we are going to get back is more than I know.”“Look! Look yonder!” cried Rodd, as, sweeping the park-like stretch around him, he suddenly caught sight of an object that filled his breast with joy.“Three cheers, my lads,” shouted Joe, waving his hand, “and— Oh, hold hard! Avast there! Gig’s safe to have a hole through her bottom.”For there, about a hundred yards away, between the trees, lay something gleaming amongst the mud.He could only see a portion, but that was enough, and one by one, stiff and cold, the unfortunate party lowered themselves down from their perches to drop into a thin surface of soft mud, the swift rush of the tide preventing it from accumulating to any depth.Their fortune was better than they anticipated, for on reaching the boat’s side it was to find that, though bottom upward, she had escaped any serious injury, the yielding boughs into which she had been swept having checked the force of the concussion and left her to glide from tangle of boughs to tangle, until she had been wedged into a huge fork and had from there slowly settled down.But there was neither oar nor boat-hook, and the line fastened to her foremost thwart had been snapped in two.“All her tackle gone,” said Joe grimly. “Well, we must try and find and hack off some big bamboo canes with our jack-knives, and then try if we can’t punt her up against the tide, which ought to be pretty slack by now—that is, if they don’t come to find us.”“But look here, Joe,” cried Rodd, as he stood shading his eyes from the horizontal sunbeams; “there’s the river, and the mist’s rolling along with the tide. Here, I’m puzzled. Which way did we come?”“Why, that’s plain enough, Mr Rodd, sir. Down with the stream yon way.”“But that must be down-stream.”“Nay, not it, my lad. The river winds, and so did my head. Here, I’m all of a maze still. No, I aren’t. Here, I’m blest! Why, you are right, sir. That is up-stream, and— Hooray, my lads! One pole will do, to steer. We are going to be carried back again, for the tide’s turned and running up steady.”A very little search resulted in their coming upon a bed of canes, out of which four were cut and trimmed, supplying them with good stout poles twelve or fourteen feet long, and laying these along the thwarts the men, glad now of the exercise to drive out the chill, insisted upon Rodd getting into the boat while they waded through the mud by her side, half lifting, half thrusting, and succeeded at last in getting her to where a sloping portion of the bank ran down to the river.“Now all together, my lads,” cried Joe. “Keep step, and hold her well in hand, for she’ll soon begin to slide; and as soon as she reaches the water, jump in. Make ready. I’ll give the word.”“Stop!” shouted Rodd. “What about the crocodiles?”“Oh, murder!” cried Joe. “I forgot all about them. Well, never mind. This aren’t no time to be nice. It’s got to be done, so here goes.”Rodd seized one of the poles, and going right to the bows knelt down in the bottom, and holding the pole lance fashion, prepared to try and use it.“That won’t be no good, my lad,” cried Joe. “Now, my lads—one, two, three! Off she goes!”They ran the gig quickly down the muddy slope, and as they touched the water and the foremost part began to float they took another step or two, gave her a final thrust, and sprang in, just as Rodd realised the truth of the sailor’s words, for as they glided out with tremendous force, before they were a dozen yards from the water’s edge the gig’s stem collided just behind two muddy-looking prominences that appeared above the surface of the water, and as the shock sent the boy backwards over the next thwart the boat, which was bounding up and down with the result of the men springing in, received another shock from something dark which rose out of the water, and then they glided on past a tremendous ebullition and were carried onward by the rising tide.“Here, let me come, Mr Rodd,” cried Joe Cross, as he scrambled forward. “Here, catch hold, sir, and help me drag my jersey over my head. The brute’s stove us in, and if I don’t look sharp— Pull, sir, pull—right over my head! That’s got it,” he cried, and he set to work thrusting the woollen knitted shirt bit by bit along between the edges of two of the planks, through which the water was rapidly gurgling in. “There,” he said; “that’ll keep some on it out; but don’t all on you stand looking at me as if I was playing a conjuring trick. Get a couple of those poles over the sides. Nay, nay, it’s no use to try to punt. Dessay the water’s fathoms deep. Just keep her head straight, and let the tide carry us on. Look out, my lads! There’s another of them up yonder. See, Mr Rodd, sir—them two nubbles? Them’s his eyes. He just keeps his beautiful muddy carcase all hid under water and squints along the top with them pretty peepers of hisn to look out for his breakfast. Keep back, sir; I believe he’s coming on at us, big as the boat is. Oh, this is a pretty place, upon my word! He means me, because he can see my white skin.”Instead of answering, Rodd picked up the bamboo pole, which had been jerked from his hands when they encountered the other reptile.Three of the men followed his example of holding them ready to strike at what they could see of the crocodile, and as they were carried closer by the tide and Rodd could just make out below the muddy surface that the water was being stirred by the undulation of the tail of the monster, which was apparently fourteen or fifteen feet long, three poles were sharply thrust together, two of them coming in contact with the creature’s head just behind its eyes.The blows were heavy, having behind them the weight and impetus of the loaded boat, and once more there was a tremendous swirl in the water, as the crocodile raised its head right out, turned completely over, displaying its pallid buff under portion, and then curved itself over, and in the act of diving down threw up its tail and struck the surface of the water with a blow that deluged the occupants of the cutter with spray.“Well,” cried Joe, as the boat glided on, “I don’t know what you chaps think of it, but I am getting warm again, and I call this ’ere sport. But I say, Mr Rodd, I am beginning to wish you was aboard theMaid of Salcombe, and you’d took me with you.”“Same ’ere, sir,” cried the men, in chorus.“See any more, Mr Rodd?”“No, not yet, Joe.”“Well, there’s no hurry, sir. Let’s get our breath. But do you call this ’ere fishing or shooting?”“There’s another,” cried Rodd excitedly; “but it’s going the other way.”“Got to know perhaps, sir, how we upset t’other. But we can spare him, for I’ll be bound to say there’s plenty more of them. Now I wonder what they are all for—pretty creatures!”“What they are for, Joe?” cried Rodd, without taking his eyes from the surface of the muddy stream which was carrying them onward.“Yes, sir; I don’t see as they are much good. I say, there’s another one! No, he’s ducked his head down. Ah, he’s coming up again. Look out, my lads!” cried the man. “I wish there was another pole. There’s nothing left for me but my knife, and they are as hard as shoehorns, I know. I don’t want to break my whittle against his skin. No, he’s going to let us go by. Ah! Look out!”For as they drew nearer the sun flashed off the reptile’s muddy skin, and they could see it glide round rapidly and strike two tremendous blows on the surface with its serrated tail—blows that had been probably directed at the boat, but which fell short, while in its blind stupidity it kept on thrashing the water several times after the vessel had passed.“Ahoy! Ahoy!” came from somewhere, seeming to echo from the trees that covered the bank.“Ahoy! Ahoy!” shouted Joe Cross back. “Why, that means help, sir. The brig must be lying there, just round that bend beyond the trees.”“Oh no,” cried Rodd excitedly. “We must have gone down miles with the tide.”“Ahoy! Ahoy!” came again. “Boat ahoy!” from somewhere out of sight; and glancing back Rodd made out that they were passing along what seemed to be a rapid bend.“Ahoy!” was shouted back, and then all at once, to the astonishment of the sufferers, a couple of boats came into sight from right astern, their occupants sending the spray flying as they bent to their oars and seemed to be racing to overtake the gig.For the moment the boats, quite a quarter of a mile behind, took up all their attention, and Rodd stood up in the bows waving his hand wildly.“There’s Uncle Paul, and the skipper, in one!” he cried.“Ay, ay, my lad; that’s our old man,” shouted Joe.“And there’s the Count, and eight men rowing hard, in the other, but—but—oh, I say, Morny isn’t there!”“Oh, he’s being skipper and taking care of the brig, sir,” cried Joe sharply, as he noted the boy’s disappointed tone of voice.“No, he isn’t,” shouted Rodd, signalling with his pole, as he saw one of the rowers rise up in the brig’s boat and begin waving an oar; “he’s pulling with the men!” And his voice sounded hoarse and choking, while, realising this fact, the boy coughed loudly and forcibly, as if to clear his throat.“Here, you’ve ketched a cold, Mr Rodd, sir,” cried Joe. “But never mind them behind in the boats. They’ll ketch us up soon. There’s another of them beauties coming at us. The beggars do seem hungry this morning. We hardly seed any of them when we were coming up yesterday. Why, of course, this is their breakfast-time, and the sight of us has made them peckish. Now then, all together, lads! Let him have it.”Four poles were thrust together, with somewhat similar effects to those on the last occasion, for the onset of the great reptile was diverted, the boat’s head turned aside, and the blows aimed at them by the creature’s tail fell short, though to the men’s dismay their efforts had driven them towards another of the monsters, which was gliding towards them from their left.But here again they successfully turned the creature aside, and Rodd exclaimed—“Suppose we missed!”“Oh, the beggars are too big to miss, sir,” cried Briggs. “But suppose we did; what then, sir?”“I don’t know,” cried Rodd excitedly. “What do you say, Joe?”“I don’t know, sir. I never learned crocodile at school, though there was one in my spelling-book, and I ’member I couldn’t understand why a four-legged chap like him,as lived in the water, should make a nest and lay eggs like a bird. Here, Harry, let me handle that pole for a few minutes. I should like to have a turn. Thank you, lad,” he continued. “Yes, they’re rum beasts, Mr Rodd, sir, and I dare say they are very slippery; but I don’t suppose I shall miss the next one— Ah! Would yer!” he shouted as one of the reptiles rose suddenly, open-mouthed, close to the boat’s head.As the man spoke he made a heavy thrust with his pole, his companions having no time to take aim, and the next moment the hideous jaws snapped to, there was a fresh swirl, the bamboo pole was jerked out of Joe’s hand, and he would have overbalanced himself and gone overboard had not those nearest to him seized him and snatched him back.“Well, now,” he cried, “just look at that!” For about half of the bamboo remained visible and went sailing up the stream.Just then there was the sharp report of a gun from behind, followed by another, while before there was time for re-loading there was the loudcrack, crackof a double fowling-piece.“Hurrah! That’s uncle!” cried Rodd. “They are firing at the crocodiles, and it will be with bullets.”“And sarve them jolly well right, Mr Rodd, say I,” cried Joe, “for I call it taking a mean advantage of a man to sneak off like that with his pole. Why, look at him, sir. He’s having a regular lark with it—picking his teeth, or something. Look how he’s waggling the top of it about. What do you say to try and steer after him and get it back?”“Ugh! No!” cried Rodd. “It would be madness.”“Well, not quite so bad as that, sir. Say about half-cracked; and that’s about what I’m beginning to think. I say, they are getting all the fun behind there.”“Look out; here comes another!” cried Rodd, for there was a pair of eyes in front gliding rapidly towards them just above the water, but apparently not satisfied with the appearance of the boat, or perhaps less ravenous, the two prominences softly disappeared before they were close up, and Joe Cross, evidently divining what might happen, suddenly caught Rodd round the waist and forced him down into the bottom of the boat.“Look out, my lads!” he yelled.As he spoke the hinder part of the boat began slowly to rise, showing that they were gliding right over a reptile’s back. Then it was turned to starboard, the water coming almost to the edge; but as it glided on it began to sink to the level again, just as it received a heavy shock from below and was driven forward with a jerk just far enough to escape a blow from a serrated tail which rose astern and showered the water over them in so much blinding spray.“Here, ahoy there!” shouted Joe. “Look alive, and bring up them guns! There’s more sport up here than we want. I wouldn’t care, Mr Rodd, if we had got our oars and my boat-hook. Nay, I don’t know, though. It’s just as well I haven’t, for I should be getting it stuck perhaps, and never see that no more.”A few minutes after, while the firing was kept up from astern, the two boats came up on either side, and amidst the heartiest of congratulations Rodd cried—“Ah, uncle, you have overtaken us at last! I am glad you have come!”“Overtaken you, my boy! Why, we have been miles down the river towards the mouth. We started as soon as the tide was slack enough for us to leave the vessels. We must have passed you in the fog, and we were beginning to despair. But we came upon one of the sailors’ caps hanging in a bough, when, thinking that perhaps we had gone too far, and Captain Chubb feeling sure that you had run ashore somewhere in the darkness, perhaps been carried right into the flooded forest, we came back and—”He ceased speaking, took a quick aim over the side of the boat, and discharged the contents of his double gun into the head of a reptile which rose three or four yards away.“The brutes!” he went on. “But there don’t appear to be so many here. We seem to have been coming through quite a shoal.”“There’s plenty of them,” growled the skipper, “but three boats together scares them a bit. Here, my lads, lay hold of this line and make fast, and we will give you a tow back to the schooner. We shan’t be long getting up to it with this tide. Why, hallo here! Not content with losing the oars and boat-hook, you’ve been and got the gig stove in! And the grapnel gone too! Here, you Joe Cross, what’s the meaning of all this?”“I’ll tell you about that, captain, by and by,” said Rodd quickly. “What’s that? You want to come aboard, Morny? No, you had better not. It’s all muddy, and we shall have to begin baling. Pitch us in a couple of tins.”“I’ll bring them,” cried the young Frenchman, rising in the boat.—“Yes, my father, I wish to go. Hook on, and let me get aboard,” he continued to the French coxswain.Half-an-hour later, with the men taking it in turns to bale, and with the crocodiles seeming to have become more scarce, they ran up alongside of the two anchored vessels, cheering and being cheered from the moment they came into sight.“Now, my lads,” cried the doctor, “every one of you take what I’ll mix up for you directly, and have a good bathe and rub down. I am not going to have you all down with fever if I can stave it off.”
And so that awful night wore on, one story bringing forth another, and the spinning of one yarn being followed by the spinning of one perhaps longer.
It was anything to relieve the terrible tedium and beguile their thoughts from the peril in which they were placed. The lapse of time was discussed, and the possibility of the slackening of the furious flow of the falling river so that a boat might come down in search of the unfortunates, but to a man all came to the conclusion that nothing could be expected until daylight, and that they must bear their fate as best they might.
The most cheerful thing that fell to their lot during the weary hours was the announcement made from time to time by Joe Cross, that the water was sinking a little lower and a little lower, so that he had room to hope that after a while he too would be able to, as he put it, drip himself dry.
But the monotony was terrible, and the morning seemed as if it would never come. For it was far different from being in the temperate region of the world, where in the summer months the darkness was slow to come and was succeeded by a very early dawn. There in that tropical southern land they were where the twenty-four-hours day was pretty equally divided into light and darkness, with scarcely any twilight to soften down the division.
But still as everything comes to those who wait, so it was there, and Joe Cross announced at last that he was sitting quite clear of the water, and therefore, as he judged it, they had not very much longer to wait before it would be day.
But he was wrong. What seemed to be an interminable time elapsed before the watchers could see for certain that a faint light seemed to be piercing the dense grey mist that covered the river. But this did at last become a certainty.
Before long, on one side, grey and grim-looking beneath a heavy mist, the great river could be seen gliding steadily along, while away to their right rose the primeval forest, rising as it were out of a sea of shadow.
The change came quickly then through a rapid twilight to the bright rays of the sunshine, which seemed to attack the river mist, piercing it through and through, routing it, and sending it in clouds rolling along the stream, while, now glistening and muddy, the banks showed out beyond the trees amidst which the huge monarch in which they had taken refuge stood towering almost alone.
“Why, we must have come inshore for some distance last night,” cried Rodd, in wonder.
“Ay, my lad. Banks flooded. High tide perhaps,” said Joe bluffly. “Well, the sooner we gets down into this mud and stretches our legs the better; and if they don’t come down in the boats, how we are going to get back is more than I know.”
“Look! Look yonder!” cried Rodd, as, sweeping the park-like stretch around him, he suddenly caught sight of an object that filled his breast with joy.
“Three cheers, my lads,” shouted Joe, waving his hand, “and— Oh, hold hard! Avast there! Gig’s safe to have a hole through her bottom.”
For there, about a hundred yards away, between the trees, lay something gleaming amongst the mud.
He could only see a portion, but that was enough, and one by one, stiff and cold, the unfortunate party lowered themselves down from their perches to drop into a thin surface of soft mud, the swift rush of the tide preventing it from accumulating to any depth.
Their fortune was better than they anticipated, for on reaching the boat’s side it was to find that, though bottom upward, she had escaped any serious injury, the yielding boughs into which she had been swept having checked the force of the concussion and left her to glide from tangle of boughs to tangle, until she had been wedged into a huge fork and had from there slowly settled down.
But there was neither oar nor boat-hook, and the line fastened to her foremost thwart had been snapped in two.
“All her tackle gone,” said Joe grimly. “Well, we must try and find and hack off some big bamboo canes with our jack-knives, and then try if we can’t punt her up against the tide, which ought to be pretty slack by now—that is, if they don’t come to find us.”
“But look here, Joe,” cried Rodd, as he stood shading his eyes from the horizontal sunbeams; “there’s the river, and the mist’s rolling along with the tide. Here, I’m puzzled. Which way did we come?”
“Why, that’s plain enough, Mr Rodd, sir. Down with the stream yon way.”
“But that must be down-stream.”
“Nay, not it, my lad. The river winds, and so did my head. Here, I’m all of a maze still. No, I aren’t. Here, I’m blest! Why, you are right, sir. That is up-stream, and— Hooray, my lads! One pole will do, to steer. We are going to be carried back again, for the tide’s turned and running up steady.”
A very little search resulted in their coming upon a bed of canes, out of which four were cut and trimmed, supplying them with good stout poles twelve or fourteen feet long, and laying these along the thwarts the men, glad now of the exercise to drive out the chill, insisted upon Rodd getting into the boat while they waded through the mud by her side, half lifting, half thrusting, and succeeded at last in getting her to where a sloping portion of the bank ran down to the river.
“Now all together, my lads,” cried Joe. “Keep step, and hold her well in hand, for she’ll soon begin to slide; and as soon as she reaches the water, jump in. Make ready. I’ll give the word.”
“Stop!” shouted Rodd. “What about the crocodiles?”
“Oh, murder!” cried Joe. “I forgot all about them. Well, never mind. This aren’t no time to be nice. It’s got to be done, so here goes.”
Rodd seized one of the poles, and going right to the bows knelt down in the bottom, and holding the pole lance fashion, prepared to try and use it.
“That won’t be no good, my lad,” cried Joe. “Now, my lads—one, two, three! Off she goes!”
They ran the gig quickly down the muddy slope, and as they touched the water and the foremost part began to float they took another step or two, gave her a final thrust, and sprang in, just as Rodd realised the truth of the sailor’s words, for as they glided out with tremendous force, before they were a dozen yards from the water’s edge the gig’s stem collided just behind two muddy-looking prominences that appeared above the surface of the water, and as the shock sent the boy backwards over the next thwart the boat, which was bounding up and down with the result of the men springing in, received another shock from something dark which rose out of the water, and then they glided on past a tremendous ebullition and were carried onward by the rising tide.
“Here, let me come, Mr Rodd,” cried Joe Cross, as he scrambled forward. “Here, catch hold, sir, and help me drag my jersey over my head. The brute’s stove us in, and if I don’t look sharp— Pull, sir, pull—right over my head! That’s got it,” he cried, and he set to work thrusting the woollen knitted shirt bit by bit along between the edges of two of the planks, through which the water was rapidly gurgling in. “There,” he said; “that’ll keep some on it out; but don’t all on you stand looking at me as if I was playing a conjuring trick. Get a couple of those poles over the sides. Nay, nay, it’s no use to try to punt. Dessay the water’s fathoms deep. Just keep her head straight, and let the tide carry us on. Look out, my lads! There’s another of them up yonder. See, Mr Rodd, sir—them two nubbles? Them’s his eyes. He just keeps his beautiful muddy carcase all hid under water and squints along the top with them pretty peepers of hisn to look out for his breakfast. Keep back, sir; I believe he’s coming on at us, big as the boat is. Oh, this is a pretty place, upon my word! He means me, because he can see my white skin.”
Instead of answering, Rodd picked up the bamboo pole, which had been jerked from his hands when they encountered the other reptile.
Three of the men followed his example of holding them ready to strike at what they could see of the crocodile, and as they were carried closer by the tide and Rodd could just make out below the muddy surface that the water was being stirred by the undulation of the tail of the monster, which was apparently fourteen or fifteen feet long, three poles were sharply thrust together, two of them coming in contact with the creature’s head just behind its eyes.
The blows were heavy, having behind them the weight and impetus of the loaded boat, and once more there was a tremendous swirl in the water, as the crocodile raised its head right out, turned completely over, displaying its pallid buff under portion, and then curved itself over, and in the act of diving down threw up its tail and struck the surface of the water with a blow that deluged the occupants of the cutter with spray.
“Well,” cried Joe, as the boat glided on, “I don’t know what you chaps think of it, but I am getting warm again, and I call this ’ere sport. But I say, Mr Rodd, I am beginning to wish you was aboard theMaid of Salcombe, and you’d took me with you.”
“Same ’ere, sir,” cried the men, in chorus.
“See any more, Mr Rodd?”
“No, not yet, Joe.”
“Well, there’s no hurry, sir. Let’s get our breath. But do you call this ’ere fishing or shooting?”
“There’s another,” cried Rodd excitedly; “but it’s going the other way.”
“Got to know perhaps, sir, how we upset t’other. But we can spare him, for I’ll be bound to say there’s plenty more of them. Now I wonder what they are all for—pretty creatures!”
“What they are for, Joe?” cried Rodd, without taking his eyes from the surface of the muddy stream which was carrying them onward.
“Yes, sir; I don’t see as they are much good. I say, there’s another one! No, he’s ducked his head down. Ah, he’s coming up again. Look out, my lads!” cried the man. “I wish there was another pole. There’s nothing left for me but my knife, and they are as hard as shoehorns, I know. I don’t want to break my whittle against his skin. No, he’s going to let us go by. Ah! Look out!”
For as they drew nearer the sun flashed off the reptile’s muddy skin, and they could see it glide round rapidly and strike two tremendous blows on the surface with its serrated tail—blows that had been probably directed at the boat, but which fell short, while in its blind stupidity it kept on thrashing the water several times after the vessel had passed.
“Ahoy! Ahoy!” came from somewhere, seeming to echo from the trees that covered the bank.
“Ahoy! Ahoy!” shouted Joe Cross back. “Why, that means help, sir. The brig must be lying there, just round that bend beyond the trees.”
“Oh no,” cried Rodd excitedly. “We must have gone down miles with the tide.”
“Ahoy! Ahoy!” came again. “Boat ahoy!” from somewhere out of sight; and glancing back Rodd made out that they were passing along what seemed to be a rapid bend.
“Ahoy!” was shouted back, and then all at once, to the astonishment of the sufferers, a couple of boats came into sight from right astern, their occupants sending the spray flying as they bent to their oars and seemed to be racing to overtake the gig.
For the moment the boats, quite a quarter of a mile behind, took up all their attention, and Rodd stood up in the bows waving his hand wildly.
“There’s Uncle Paul, and the skipper, in one!” he cried.
“Ay, ay, my lad; that’s our old man,” shouted Joe.
“And there’s the Count, and eight men rowing hard, in the other, but—but—oh, I say, Morny isn’t there!”
“Oh, he’s being skipper and taking care of the brig, sir,” cried Joe sharply, as he noted the boy’s disappointed tone of voice.
“No, he isn’t,” shouted Rodd, signalling with his pole, as he saw one of the rowers rise up in the brig’s boat and begin waving an oar; “he’s pulling with the men!” And his voice sounded hoarse and choking, while, realising this fact, the boy coughed loudly and forcibly, as if to clear his throat.
“Here, you’ve ketched a cold, Mr Rodd, sir,” cried Joe. “But never mind them behind in the boats. They’ll ketch us up soon. There’s another of them beauties coming at us. The beggars do seem hungry this morning. We hardly seed any of them when we were coming up yesterday. Why, of course, this is their breakfast-time, and the sight of us has made them peckish. Now then, all together, lads! Let him have it.”
Four poles were thrust together, with somewhat similar effects to those on the last occasion, for the onset of the great reptile was diverted, the boat’s head turned aside, and the blows aimed at them by the creature’s tail fell short, though to the men’s dismay their efforts had driven them towards another of the monsters, which was gliding towards them from their left.
But here again they successfully turned the creature aside, and Rodd exclaimed—
“Suppose we missed!”
“Oh, the beggars are too big to miss, sir,” cried Briggs. “But suppose we did; what then, sir?”
“I don’t know,” cried Rodd excitedly. “What do you say, Joe?”
“I don’t know, sir. I never learned crocodile at school, though there was one in my spelling-book, and I ’member I couldn’t understand why a four-legged chap like him,as lived in the water, should make a nest and lay eggs like a bird. Here, Harry, let me handle that pole for a few minutes. I should like to have a turn. Thank you, lad,” he continued. “Yes, they’re rum beasts, Mr Rodd, sir, and I dare say they are very slippery; but I don’t suppose I shall miss the next one— Ah! Would yer!” he shouted as one of the reptiles rose suddenly, open-mouthed, close to the boat’s head.
As the man spoke he made a heavy thrust with his pole, his companions having no time to take aim, and the next moment the hideous jaws snapped to, there was a fresh swirl, the bamboo pole was jerked out of Joe’s hand, and he would have overbalanced himself and gone overboard had not those nearest to him seized him and snatched him back.
“Well, now,” he cried, “just look at that!” For about half of the bamboo remained visible and went sailing up the stream.
Just then there was the sharp report of a gun from behind, followed by another, while before there was time for re-loading there was the loudcrack, crackof a double fowling-piece.
“Hurrah! That’s uncle!” cried Rodd. “They are firing at the crocodiles, and it will be with bullets.”
“And sarve them jolly well right, Mr Rodd, say I,” cried Joe, “for I call it taking a mean advantage of a man to sneak off like that with his pole. Why, look at him, sir. He’s having a regular lark with it—picking his teeth, or something. Look how he’s waggling the top of it about. What do you say to try and steer after him and get it back?”
“Ugh! No!” cried Rodd. “It would be madness.”
“Well, not quite so bad as that, sir. Say about half-cracked; and that’s about what I’m beginning to think. I say, they are getting all the fun behind there.”
“Look out; here comes another!” cried Rodd, for there was a pair of eyes in front gliding rapidly towards them just above the water, but apparently not satisfied with the appearance of the boat, or perhaps less ravenous, the two prominences softly disappeared before they were close up, and Joe Cross, evidently divining what might happen, suddenly caught Rodd round the waist and forced him down into the bottom of the boat.
“Look out, my lads!” he yelled.
As he spoke the hinder part of the boat began slowly to rise, showing that they were gliding right over a reptile’s back. Then it was turned to starboard, the water coming almost to the edge; but as it glided on it began to sink to the level again, just as it received a heavy shock from below and was driven forward with a jerk just far enough to escape a blow from a serrated tail which rose astern and showered the water over them in so much blinding spray.
“Here, ahoy there!” shouted Joe. “Look alive, and bring up them guns! There’s more sport up here than we want. I wouldn’t care, Mr Rodd, if we had got our oars and my boat-hook. Nay, I don’t know, though. It’s just as well I haven’t, for I should be getting it stuck perhaps, and never see that no more.”
A few minutes after, while the firing was kept up from astern, the two boats came up on either side, and amidst the heartiest of congratulations Rodd cried—
“Ah, uncle, you have overtaken us at last! I am glad you have come!”
“Overtaken you, my boy! Why, we have been miles down the river towards the mouth. We started as soon as the tide was slack enough for us to leave the vessels. We must have passed you in the fog, and we were beginning to despair. But we came upon one of the sailors’ caps hanging in a bough, when, thinking that perhaps we had gone too far, and Captain Chubb feeling sure that you had run ashore somewhere in the darkness, perhaps been carried right into the flooded forest, we came back and—”
He ceased speaking, took a quick aim over the side of the boat, and discharged the contents of his double gun into the head of a reptile which rose three or four yards away.
“The brutes!” he went on. “But there don’t appear to be so many here. We seem to have been coming through quite a shoal.”
“There’s plenty of them,” growled the skipper, “but three boats together scares them a bit. Here, my lads, lay hold of this line and make fast, and we will give you a tow back to the schooner. We shan’t be long getting up to it with this tide. Why, hallo here! Not content with losing the oars and boat-hook, you’ve been and got the gig stove in! And the grapnel gone too! Here, you Joe Cross, what’s the meaning of all this?”
“I’ll tell you about that, captain, by and by,” said Rodd quickly. “What’s that? You want to come aboard, Morny? No, you had better not. It’s all muddy, and we shall have to begin baling. Pitch us in a couple of tins.”
“I’ll bring them,” cried the young Frenchman, rising in the boat.—“Yes, my father, I wish to go. Hook on, and let me get aboard,” he continued to the French coxswain.
Half-an-hour later, with the men taking it in turns to bale, and with the crocodiles seeming to have become more scarce, they ran up alongside of the two anchored vessels, cheering and being cheered from the moment they came into sight.
“Now, my lads,” cried the doctor, “every one of you take what I’ll mix up for you directly, and have a good bathe and rub down. I am not going to have you all down with fever if I can stave it off.”