"Well," continued the commander, his voice making use of the breeze as he stood aft of the group, "I could not have slept more than three or four hours on a stretch, when I was woke up by a fellow shoving his lantern in my face, and saying it wasn't me he wanted; for which I gave him a hearty objurgation, and turned over with a swing of the cot to go to sleep again. The sailor grumbled something about the parson being wanted for the captain, and all at once it flashed on my mind where we were, with the whole of last night's ticklish work—seeing that, hard rub as it was, it had clean left me for the time. "Try the aftermost berth, then," said I, slipping out in the dark to put on my trousers. The fact was, on going below to our state-room, I had found my own cot taken up by some one in the confusion; and as every door stood open at night in that latitude, I e'en made free with the nearest, which I knew was the missionary's. In a minute or two I heard Westwood meet the mate, who said he thought the captain would like to see him, and hoped they hadn't "disturbed the other gentleman." "Oh no, I daresay not," said Westwood, rather nervously, guessing, I daresay, what he was wanted for; while Finch slipped quietly past to listen at the state-room door, where both he and I might hear the "other gentleman," whoever he was, snoring pretty plain. When the first officer shut the door to, however, turned the key, and put it in his pocket, I nearly gave vent to a whistle.—"I see!" thought I; "but, my fine fellow, it seemed you never were meant for a good jailor, anyhow!" He was no sooner gone than I walked forward toward the captain's cabin, near the after-hatchway, anxious enough to see how the poor man was, since I had had such a share in bringing him to a point, one way or another. Westwood was standing against the light out of the open door, and I looked in along with him, at the cot slung high to the beams like a lump of shadow, the lamp striking across below it on all the captain's little affairs—his glazed hat and his wet coat, the names of two or three old books, even, hanging in shelves against the bulkhead—and into the little state-room off the cabin, where the surgeon was stooping to mix a draught. The hard-featured Scotch mate stood holding the captain's wrist with one clumsy flipper, as if trying to feel his pulse, fumbling about his own face with the other, and looking more concerned than I'd thought possible for him. "Well, I've slept a—good deal," said the captain, in a weak voice, putting up his hand slowly to rub his eyes, but seemingly quite composed, and knowing nothing of what had happened—which rid me of the horrid notion I could scarce help before, that he had known what he was about. His head was close shaved, and the look of a sailor clean gone off his face with the bluff, honest oak-colour it commonly had, till you'd have wished him decently in his bed thousands of miles off, with women slipping out and in; only the blood from his arm hanging down on the sheet, with the sharp point of his nose and the shape of his knees coming up off the shadow, kept it all in one with the wild affair on deck a few hours gone. "She's on her course, you say?" added he, listlessly. "Must be a very light breeze though, Mr Macleod." "So it is, sir; so it is, no doubt!" replied the second-mate, soothing him; "did ye say we'll pent the ship, sir?" "Ay, before we go into port, Mr Macleod, to be sure," said Captain Williamson, trying to put a cheerful tone into his voice; "she's had a good deal of buffeting, but we musn't let 'em see it, you know! Didn't you lose a mizen-topmast somehow, though, Mr Macleod?" "'Deed ay, sir," said Macleod hastily, afraid he was getting upon the scent of what had happened; "the first officer's watch it was, sir—will I tell Mr Finch ye're wanting to speak to him about it, Captain Williamson?" and he began to shuffle towards the door. "Finch? Finch?" said the sick man, passing his finger over his eyes again; "what voyage is this, Mr Macleod?" "Why—why," said the Scotchman, starting, and rather puzzled himself. "Oo, it's just this voyage, ye know, sir! Mr Finch, ye mind, sir?" "No, no; don't let him leave the deck for a moment, Macleod!" said the captain anxiously: "harkye, James, I'm afraid I've trusted overmuch to the young man all along! I'll tell ye, Mr Macleod, I don't know whether I was asleep or not, but I heard him somewhere wishing he had the command of this ship! I shouldn't like him to take her off my hands! Have you seen the Scilly lights yet, Mr Macleod?" The mate shook his head; he had contrived to persuade the poor man we were far homeward bound. "If you'd only get the pilot aboard, Mr Macleod," the captain went on, "I'd die contented;—but mind the charts—mind the charts—I've got the charts to mind for another sort of voyage myself, James!" "Hoot, hoot, captain!" said the Scotchman, "what sets ye for to talk after that fashion—you'll be up an' about decks directly, sir! What were ye saying about topem'sts now, sir?" Captain Williamson gave the second mate a glance that looked into him, and he held down his head, for the man evidently believed fully, as none of us could help doing, that there was death on the captain's face. "James, James!" said the captain slowly, "you've no notion how some things weigh on the mind at a pass of this kind! Other things one don't remember—but there's one in particular, almost as it were yesterday—why, surely you were with me that voyage, Mr Macleod! when I let some o' the passengers take a boat in a calm, and all—" Here he stopped, seemingly overcome. "There was one young creature amongst 'em," he went on, "the age of my own girl, Macleod—my own little Nan, you know—and now—now I miss her—and, and—" The poor man gave a great gulp, clutching the mate's arm, and gazing him in the face. "Wasn't it a long time ago?" said he, very anxiously; "if it wasn't, I would go mad! They were all drowned—drowned—I see that black squall coming down on the swell now, man, and the brig, and all of us looking out to the wind'ard!" "I mind something about it," replied Macleod stoutly, though he looked away; "'twas none o' your fault, though, Captain Williamson—they were just fey, sir; and more than that, if ye mind, sir, they took the boat again' all orders—on the sly, I may say." Westwood was on the point of starting forward to make known how the case stood, on the strength of our finding the paper in the bottle; when I pressed his arm, and whispered that it could only make things worse, and cheat the sick man of a notion more likely to do him good than otherwise. "It's a heavy charge, Mr Macleod, a heavy charge!" said he, falling back again; "and one Mr Brown needn't envy." "Mr Finch, sir, ye mind," put in the second mate, setting him right; "but keep up your heart, sir, for anysake!" "I feel I'll last over the time o' next full tide," said the captain solemnly. "I don't want to know how far we're off, only if there's any chance at all, Macleod, you won't spare canvass to carry her in." The Scotchman rubbed one of his hard cheek-bones after the other, and grumbled something or other in his throat by way of agreement. The whole thing was melancholy to see after last night's stir, with the dim lamp or two twinkling along the gloom of the steerage, the dead quietness of the ship, and the smothered sort of glare under the captain's cot bringing out the mere litter on the floor, to the very cockroaches putting their ugly feelers out of one of his shoes in a corner: he shut his eyes, and lay for a minute or two seemingly asleep, only murmuring something about a breeze, and then asking them to shove out the port, 'twas so close. The second mate looked to the surgeon, who signed to him to do it, as if it didn't much matter by this time; while he gave him the draught of physic he was mixing, however.

The Indiaman was beginning to swing slowly before the first of the flood, stern off at her anchors; and whenever the port was opened, 'twas so still otherwise, that you heard the tide clearly in the cabin, rippling along the timbers to the copper upon her bows—plash, plash, and lap, lip, lap, like no other earthly sound that a man can hear—and you even began to note it on something else a good bit off, though it seemed to be all quite dark out-board. The captain's eyes opened by degrees, till we saw them looking at us out of the shadow of the cot, and the second mate started as if to mend his mistake; only 'twas plain enough, by that time, the captain knew the sound, half raising himself up and listening. A few early musquitoes came in, and, after dancing about to refresh themselves in the light and warmth under the cot, began to bite savagely; every one of us had a distant horn sounding in his ear, and each was rubbing it or his nose, except the sick man; but not one of them settled on him. As the starboard port slued gradually opposite to the nearest shore, a low, deep hum was carried in over the water, ebbing and flowing, and full of dim, creeping noises, like things stirring in their sleep, as if the little cabin had been an ear to the ship. At times the tree-frogs broke out in a loud clicking chirrup; then, between the fits of it, when all seemed still again for a moment or two, you heard a low, half-smothered, small sound, deeper down, as it were, fill up the break with its throbbing and trill-trilling, as if just one land-cricket or a grasshopper did it, till it came out as clear as though it were a child's rattle close by, and all of a sudden stopped; when back floated the huge whispering hum again, with a damp smell of leaves on a cold breath of the land air, that died away as quickly as it reached us. The bewilderment on Captain Williamson's white face for that minute's time was cruel to witness, and Macleod would certainly have closed the port, but for the captain's seizing his arm again, with a wild, questioning sort of a look into the second mate's eyes. "Oh, good God!" faltered out the captain, "it's—it's land!—where—where?—" "For goodsake, sir," said Macleod, "don't ask me the now—take a bit sleep, sir." We could hear one another breathing, when ting-tang went four bells on deck. You heard it going across to the shore, as it were; and a few moments after, out of the humming far and wide along the land, back came the sound of another bell, toll upon toll, like some clock striking the hour a long way off. Then a third one followed on it, from a different direction, ringing clearer in the air; while the murmur and the rush seemed to swell up the more all round, and the plashing of the tide made the ship heave at her anchors. The mate shivered, Westwood and I started, but some extraordinary notion or other gleamed over the captain's face as he sat up. He was quite in his senses, too, apparently, though it seemed to be neither more nor less than sheer joy that overcame him, for he let out a long breath, and his eyes were glistening as if the tears stood in them. "James—James Macleod!" said he quickly, with a husky voice, "you oughtn't to've deceived one you've sailed so long with; but you meant me a good surprise, and 'twas kindly done of you! I know the very run o' the clocks off Greenwich Reach, man; d'ye think one could mistake the sound of Lon'on town, fidgeting when it wakes, either?—we're—we're home already!" And he fell back in the cot, with the drops running down his cheeks, smiling happily all the time at Macleod in a way that went to one's heart; while the Scotchman stared helplessly to the surgeon, who slipped to the port and closed it. "I know by your way, James," continued the poor man, "you wanted to send up to Virginia Row for 'em all; but don't send for an hour yet; better go up yourself and break it to 'em—break it to 'em, be sure of that, James; I shouldn't wonder but I pulled up, after all. Ay—that first one we heard was Greenwich Hospital—t'other in Dickson's brewery or Redriff—" Here his eyelids began to drop, owing to the sleeping-draught he had got, when suddenly they opened wide again. "Ha!" said he, listening, and putting up a finger, "but I haven't heard St Paul's strike six yet; it's seldom so long after; ought to be heard from here of a morning; let's—" By little and little, however, the sick man's eyes closed, and you heard him murmuring, as his finger sank down, "Macleod, say—to her—say—luff, luff, my lad, keep her her course—," till his shrunk face was as quiet on the pillow as if he'd been really at home the first night after a voyage.

"Oh man, doctor!" said the second mate, heaving a breath, "isn't terrible! Good forgive me for a lee to a dying man! Take an old seaman's word for it, Doctor Small, yon clock ashore was no mortal soond, sir; ye may keep your drogues for them they'll do good to. 'Twas neither more or less than the captain's dregy!" "Phoo!" answered the Scotch surgeon, who was one of your sceptical chaps, as I heard say, "some other vessels here, of course, that's all." The sailor gave him only a smile of pity for not being able to distinguish the sound of a ship's bell. "There can't be a town hereabout, Collins?" whispered Westwood. "A town,—no!" said I, "it's the best wilderness sign you can have—the African bell-bird!"[19] "Ah, ah!" said the surgeon, laughing, "there now, Macleod,—of course it can be explained naturally, like other things." The second mate gave me a doubtful scowl; but seeing Westwood, whom he had always seemed to think rather in the way before, his eye softened.

"You'll be wanting to see the captain as soon as he wakes up, sir," said he. "I'm terrified to face him—but if ye'd juist slip in when he comes to himself, sir, I'm thinking, reverend sir, ye might wile him off yon terrible notion o' his." Westwood shook his head seriously, not knowing what to say. "Ay, ay, sir," continued Macleod, as he half closed the door, "no doubt a man ought to be upon better things; but it's hard for him, when he's got a wife and weans six thousand miles away, and wants them alongside in a couple of hours—uncommon hard, sir! She's a douce, careful body, too, Mistress Williamson, like the captain's self; and I heard her fleech sore with the captain before we sailed, for to bide quietly ashore this time, for good. Poor woman! if she didn't e'en go the length o' partin' in anger the last morning, wae's me! till the very moment when (he telt me himself, sir,) she out with her arms round his neck, crying like to choke! An' all to—but if the captain had a fault, 'twas the love o'—good forgive me, though, when it was but studying his faim'ly, Mr Thomas! If it was only an auld tarry deevil like me, now, with neither kith or kin!" "Except cousins, Mr Macleod," said the surgeon, as he wiped his lancet on his coat-tail—"plenty of them in the High—" But he caught Westwood's eye, and was ashamed to finish his cursed heartless joke, though the rough second mate was too full of his feeling to hear it: when Westwood said something about our all thinking too little of these things before-hand, but how the captain was plainly a man that had done his duty carefully, which no doubt would ease his mind. The mate looked up, and eyed him sideways for a moment: "Eh? what?" said he, bluntly; "it's not so little I mind o' what I used to hear at the kirk langsyne, as not to know that's not the right doctrine. D'ye think, sir, that's what'll put him over, when he finds out this is not Greenwich Reach? There's the Methody minister with the glasses, though!" he broke out, when again a look of despair came over his broad hard-favoured countenance. "They're always upon works, too, I've heard!" said he, turning and murmuring to himself; "oh, if I could but hoist out a bit screed o' the truth, myself, to comfort the poor man with! Lord, how didn't I think of the Shorter Carritch—let's see how't went—'What is the chief end of'—no, it's 'What is faith in—faith in the only rule to direct us—no, no.—Baptism is a sacrament—where—whereby"—and he was still overhauling some old catechism in this fashion, twisting himself all the time as if he were twisting a stiff rope the wrong way, with a look of misery none of us could have had the heart to laugh at, when a middy's voice came squeaking down the dark after-hatchway. "Mr Macleod, sir, the chief officer wants you on deck." Westwood slipped quietly off, and the young surgeon was beginning to talk easily, to rid his mind of something, perhaps; till I asked if there wasn't any chance. "Oh, the captain, you mean?" said he, "don't think there is—he's a bad subject! If we were out at sea now, Mr Collins, the calenture would make him think the waves all grass, or something as green as—as the cawdets used to call—" I looked at the fellow sternly, and he changed his key, though with a surprised air. "You're blessed early up, though, you two!" said he. "I suppose that cursed squall kept you idlers awake; but how they managed without the first mate I can't think. Clever fellow, Finch! but wasn't it a curious trick of the poor skipper to box him up below here? I fancy he'd a guess we would all soon be under the mate's command! It's a queer thing the brain, isn't it, Mr Collins? For exaumple, now, there's the captain it makes think something or other a clock near London, with everything accordingly! Macleod fancies it a soopernatural knell, and twaddles about some Calvinist stuff he learnt at school. Then you and me, you know, imaugines it's a bird—now whuch is it after all? Nothing—maybe, eh?" The fellow capped all with a sneer, as much as to say I was a fool, which I had stood from him several times before; though now I could have kicked him, more for his heartless way than aught else. "I'll tell you, Mr Small," said I, "what I think you—you're neither more nor less than a—" but I turned on my heel. "I'm off, however," said he, "to turn in again."

Through the half-closed door one could see the sick man's face sleeping so quiet in the shadow from the lamp, you heard not a breath. I looked up the after-hatchway. It seemed still quite dark; and a patch of the deep dark-blue sky showed high over the square opening, with two or three keen sparks of stars, green ones and blue ones—you'd have thought the ladder, short as it was, went up to somewhere clean above the world. But the moment I got on deck, I saw it was really lighter—the heavy fog creeping slowly astern of the ship on both hands; the white mist rolling faster over it before the sea-breeze against her bows, which had swung seaward by this time from the tide, that rushed like a mill-stream upon both her tight cables; while the muddy river-water, bubbling, eddying, and frothing away past, spread far up in the middle, into the dusk astern. Such a jabbering, croaking, hissing, shrieking, and yelling, too, as burst into one's ears out of the dark, as if whole legions of monkeys, bull-frogs, parrots, parroqueets, and what not, were coming together full upon us from both sides, one band nearer than the other; till the heavy boom of the surf round the point, and the roar of the tide coming in over the shallows about the river-mouth, pretty well drowned it. The sudden change was a good relief, Babel though it seemed, after the closeness below, with what had been going on; and I looked ahead towards the sea, which lay away out off our larboard bow, round the headland, and over the opposite point; a cold, watery streak of light showing it from where the breakers rose plunging and scattering along the sandy bar, to the steady gray line of horizon, clipped by one of the two brown chops we had got into. It looked dreary enough as yet, the mouth of it being wider than I'd fancied it from seaward at night; though even with full water over the long spit of sand in the middle, there was no draught at all for the Indiaman except by the channel betwixt it and the bold point on our right; and pretty narrow it appeared from our present berth, heaving as it did with the green swell that set in, while meantime the mist scudding across the face of the headland let us see but the hard lump of bare black rock underneath.

In less time than I've taken to speak, however, the full space of sky aloft was turning clear, the sea far away suddenly shone out blue, with the surges tipped white; you saw a sparkling star high over it sink slowly in, and the fog spread off the water near us, till here and there you caught the muffled-up shape of a big tree or two looming through, not half-a-mile off our starboard quarter; the mist creeping over the headland till the sharp peak of it stood out against its shadow on the shoulder of a hill beyond, and old Bob Martin's single clump of cocoas on the rise, waving in landward from the brisk sea-breeze. One passenger after another came peeping sleepily out of the companion-hatch, at the men clearing away the wreck of the spars, and swabbing the quarter-deck down; but scarce had Smith, one of the young writers, reached the poop, when he gave a shout that covered both poop-ladders in no time, with people scrambling over each other to get up. Next minute you'd have fancied them a knot of flamingoes with their wings out, as the bright red daybreak brought out the edge of the woods far astern, through a hazy lane in the purple mist, topped so with stray cocoa-nut trees and cabbage-palms, dabbled like brushes in the colour, that they scarce knew them to be woods at all, and not a whole lot of wild savages fresh from other business of the kind, coming down with all sorts of queer tools upon us; more especially when one heard such a chorus of unaccountable cries, whistling, and screaming, as seemed to struggle with the sound of the sea ahead of us, and the plash alongside. The huge round sun struck hot crimson along the far turn of the reach, with all manner of twisted blots upon him, as it were, and the very grass and long reeds seemingly rustling into his face, so one didn't for the moment know him either; while the muddy chocolate-coloured eddies, sweeping and closing beyond the ship's rudder, glittered and frothed up like blood; and every here and there, along the streak of light, the head of a log or a long branch came dipping up terribly plain no wonder the old Seringapatam had apparently turned tail to it all, ready to bolt if she could. Almost as soon as you took your hands off your eyes, though, and could see without a red ball or two before them,—there was the nearest shore growing out toward our starboard bulwark all along, crowded with wet green woods, up into steaming high ground—all to eastward a dazzle of light, with two or three faint mountain-peaks shooting up far off in it, and a woody blue hill or so between; while here and there a broad bright hazy spoke off the sun came cutting down into the forest, that brought out a patch full of long big leaves, ten times greener than the rest, and let you look off the deck into the heart of it amongst the stems over the bank. The jabber in the woods had passed off all at once with the dusk, the water deepening over the bar, and the tide running slower, so that every one's confused face turned breathless with delight as it grew stiller and stiller. The whole breadth of the river shone out by this time, full and smooth, to the opposite shore three times as far away, where the wood and bulrushes seemed to grow out of the water; a long thick range of low, muddy-looking mangroves, with a cover of dark-green, rounding from the farthest point one saw, down to some sandy hummocks near the mouth, and a ridge of the same, drifted up by the wind off the beach. Beyond that side there was nothing, apparently, but a rolling sweep of long coarse grass, with a few straggling cocoa-nut trees and baobabs, like big swollen logs on end, and taken to sprouting at top: a dun-coloured heave of land in the distance, too, that came out, as it got hotter, in a long desert-like, red brick-dust sort of a glare. The sole living things to be seen as yet, were some small birds rising up out of the long grass, and the turkey-buzzards sailing high over all across, as if on the look-out.

The air was so cool and clear, however, from the tornado overnight—not a cloud in the sky, and the strange scent of the land reaching us as the dew rose off it—you could see far and wide, with a delicious feeling of it all, that kept every one standing fixed on the spot where he first gained the deck, even the men looking over their shoulders with the ropes in their fists, and the fresh morning breeze lifting one's hair. Surprised as the passengers were, nobody spoke a word, except the three or four children shouting, dancing, and pointing together; without being noticed, till all at once the whole poopful burst into one confusion of questions and exclamations, running hither and thither, shaking hands and jostling each other like distracted people. I had a spyglass at my eye, making out the other shore, when, turning round in the middle of it, the first thing I saw was Violet Hyde's face, as she stood with one little foot on the stair-head behind me, holding the rail with one hand, her eyes sparkling and her parted lips murmuring like one in a dream. "Oh, Mr Collins!" exclaimed she, breathless; "what is this? Where are we—is it fairyland? A river!" "Yes, in Africa," I said; "but whether it's the Bembarooghe or the—" "That fearful, fearful evening!" continued she, shuddering: "I saw the frightful sky, and heard the storm—and now!—Were we not in some very great danger, sir?" "Yes, ma'am, we were," replied I, as stiffly as I could; "but, happily, its over now," and I gave my cap a lift to move off, uneasy as I was every moment, lest Sir Charles should catch me speaking again to his daughter. However, Miss Hyde was gazing eagerly at the land, and I had to wait. "What lovely, lovely green!" she half whispered: "oh, if one could only tread upon!—so unEnglish those strange tall trees look! are they not cocoa-trees and—and—" Suddenly her voice faltered, and she turned round with her bright blue eyes swimming in tears—"How—how thankful we should be that we are not—like our poor, poor friends, who were lost!" exclaimed she. I thought of the poor captain below in his cot, but next moment I was explaining, to her sheer amazement, how the real truth of the matter stood, though, if possible, it seemed to horrify her still more. "I can't think what they may be," I rapped out; "but if I had the command of this ship, I'd up anchor this very hour, and go out—at least as soon as the tide ebbed; but, at any rate, at the Cape I mean to get hold of some schooner or other, and if it were to China, why, I'll cruise after 'em till I—" "Then you think—" began she, and an arch, inquisitive sort of look danced in both her eyes as she turned away to watch the shore again, saying slowly, "You are a—a naval gentleman, then, Mr West—Mr Collins?" I tried to stammer out something by way of an explanation, but it wouldn't do, and I said, "At any rate, I'm no better, by this time, than an idler aboard here, ma'am!"

All at once I caught a side-look from her eyes, that wasn't meant for me, as she glanced over the poop-netting. Half provoking and half sweet it was, though, and it made my brain somehow or other seem to spin round, till a little after, before I well knew what I was about, I was holding the long spy glass for her to see the bank of the river,—her warm breath coming on my ear as I stooped before her, near enough to have kissed the muslin on her shoulder, while her rosy mouth changed with every new spot that the glass brought near; and she had to hold one taper fore-finger on the other eye-lid to keep it shut, so that I could dwell on her face as if she'd been asleep. "There, there!" exclaimed she, "are actually flowers—with such immense leaves! And now—an enormous tree, with roots hanging from the branches, and other stems growing up into them. Why, yes!—is not that a banian-tree, Mr—," and she looked away at me, when of course the tree was vanished, and instead of that, the rather undeniable expression of a fellow in love, two or three inches off, bent fair upon her. Violet Hyde coloured a little, and looked in again. "And—I think—" continued she, "I see—oh, two such beautiful creatures—deer, I think—coming out to drink from the river!" All this time, the ecstacies of the rest kept up the noise and confusion: the young lady's maid was gaping open-mouthed at the shore, not even noticing her young mistress's straw bonnet fall off, and I had just picked it up with one hand, to put it quietly over that matchless nut-brown hair of hers, shining suddenly in the sun like silk, when the Judge's voice sang out sharp from the other stair, "Violet, child, you'll have a sun-stroke. Kitmagar, you scoundrel, beebee sahib punkah lao, sirrah!" I held on to the telescope like grim death, while that eternal punkah was hoisted over us both, the Judge eyeing me somewhat coolly for the first moment. "Well, well, Mr Westwood," said he, however, "you've got rid of that proud freak of yours;—such behaviour as yours yesterday, I assure you, I shouldn't have endured from any one else, young man! But, my dear boy," added he, suddenly, "from what I can gather, indeed saw myself last night, I am convinced we owe you a very great deal—even, I suspect, the safety of the entire vessel!" Miss Hyde had left off using the glass, and, as I stood up, she gave me a quick glance of amazement. "Mere chance, sir," I stammered. "Why," said Sir Charles, "I saw you at the steerage in the middle of the hurricane, when I believe the actual officers of the ship had left it in dismay. I tell you what, Mr Westwood, you're a bold fellow; and your uncle and I must see in India if we can't reward you in some way, my dear boy!" All this fondling style of thing, and for little more than a piece of luck, would have disgusted me, if I hadn't been more taken up with watching the side of Violet Hyde's face, as she listened for sounds in the woods ashore. "Strange wasn't it, Violet, my dear," continued he to his daughter, that my friend the Councillor's nephew should have gone out in the same Indiaman, so fortunately—though of course, after all, it was the first this season." "Ah!" said she, starting, "I beg pardon, papa,—what did you—weren't you talking of the river?" "Don't you hear, child," said the Judge, "I said it was a curious coincidence, Mr Westwood's going in this vessel." "Oh yes, indeed!" answered she, and couldn't help looking down a little confounded. But the lady's-maid was putting on her tiny slipper, which had come off, while her father mentioned that of course I'd had practical reasons for not owning my profession hitherto;—meaning, I suppose, that I didn't speak for fear of having to work, like the monkeys—though the sharp old lawyer must have had a better guess by this time, and queer enough it must have been to see her face, listening to him as he explained it all. I stood biting my lips, meanwhile—two or three times on the point of telling him it was all nonsense about my being a nephew of any hanged old nabob whatever; when Sir Charles said carelessly he should leave the Seringapatam, if possible, at the Cape of Good Hope, as he couldn't trust safely to the present officers.

Just then up got the merry chant of the men running round with the capstan-bars, to get up anchor; the chief officer wishing, as it was found, to carry her farther into the river with the breeze—for the sake of filling our water-casks the easier, according to him, but more likely out of sheer spite at what had been done without him. What with eagerness in the cuddy to get on shore and see the woods, the breakfast below was a rare scene, no one minding what he did, even to rushing slap into a couple of ladies' berth for his boots, or laying a couple of loaded Joe Mantons into somebody's bed, swallowing biscuit and butter on the way.

Suddenly we heard the splash of paddles in the water, with a hail in some foreign tongue or other, and hurried on deck in a body; where we found the ship tiding it slowly up, under jibs and foretopsail, and beginning to open a longer reach where the river seemed to narrow in. A black-eyed, black-bearded fellow, with a tallowy, yellow, sweaty sort of complexion, in a dirty jacket, drawers, and short boots, and an immense grass hat, shouting Portuguese louder and louder into the first-mate's ear, till he actually put both hands together and roared through them,—pointing to himself now and then, as if surprised he wasn't known. All at once, evidently quite disgusted, he turned and looked over the side, saying something to one of the ugliest and most ill-looking mulattoes I ever saw, who sat in the stern of a long rough canoe, hollowed out of some tree, with two naked black rowers, less of the real nigger than himself, as they leant grinning up at the bulwarks with their sharp teeth, that appeared as if they'd been filed to a point. The mulatto gloomed, but he gave no answer, and as one of the cadets and I knew a little Portuguese, we managed together to get something out of the fellow on deck; though at noticing me for the first time that morning, I saw Finch turn red with surprise. We understood the man to ask if we wanted nothing particular in the river, the meaning of which I saw better on bethinking me of the fire along the bush inside the headland, that had let me see the marks of it—no doubt a signal to some craft they had taken us for. However, so soon as he heard we needed no more than water and spars, after musing a minute, and speaking again to Rodriguez, as he called the mulatto, he said he would pilot us to a convenient berth himself, for two or three dollars; notwithstanding his title was, as he said, Don JosÉ Jeronimo Santa somebody, commandant of the Portuguese fort something else. The river, we found, was the Nouries or the CuanenÉ, where they had a settlement called Caconda, a good way up; a remarkably bad country, he gave us to know, and not worth staying in, from the number of flies, and the elephants having got into a cursed way of burying their tusks,—except, he hinted, for the plenty of blacks, all anxious to be sold and to see foreign countries; but the trade was nothing yet, absolutely nothing, said he, blowing his nose without a pocket handkerchief, and suiting the act to the word, as he mentioned his notion of throwing it up and going farther north-west. By this time we had stood over to the lowest shore, till you could see the thick coffee-coloured mud in among the roots and suckers of the dark-green mangroves, with their red pods bursting under their rank-looking leaves,—and over them, through the tall coarse guinea-grass, to the knots of feathery cocoas behind, swarming with insects: when he gave the sign to go about, one of his blacks heaving a lead, and grunting out the depth of water, as the ship made a long stretch across towards the woody side again, and Don JosÉ all the time taking it as easy as if the quarter-deck were his own, while he asked for a cigar and lighted it. Joke though he did, yet I couldn't like the fellow at all; however, as soon as she got pretty near the shore, about a quarter of a mile from the mouth of what seemed a wide creek, glittering up between a high fringe of cane and bamboo clumps, he had the sails clued up, a single anchor let go in four or five fathoms, and our Portuguese friend got his money and bundled over the side, pulling quietly ashore.

The tide by this time was quite still, and the breeze sank almost at once, as we were shut in from the sea; when we were surprised to see the striped Portuguese flag rise off a tall bamboo stick, among the bushes on the open shore, nearly abreast of us; where a low, muddy-like wall was to be made out, with something of a thatched roof or two, and a sort of rude wooden jetty running before it into the water. Shortly after, Don JosÉ came paddling out again, and got on board, this time with an old cocked hat on, excusing himself for not having fired a gun—which was to save us expense, he remarked, being particular friends—seeing that he'd got to demand twelve dollars of harbour dues and duties, whereas, if he saluted, he must have charged fourteen. The cool impudence of this brought the chief officer from the capstan; but the steady face of the fellow, and the glance he took round the deck when the cadet told him he'd better be off at once, made me think he had something or other to back him. Mr Finch, as usual, fumed up into a passion, and told the men to fling him over into his canoe, which they accordingly did, without the least nicety about it; the Portuguese next minute picking himself up, and standing straight, with the look of a perfect devil, as he shook his fist at the whole ship, while the canoe slid off to the shore.

Budge even so much as a single fathom, at present, we could not; and most of us were too much in the spirit of fun and venture to care a fig for having made an enemy of Don JosÉ-So-on, as the cadet called him; indeed, it seemed rather to set a finer point on people's admiration of the green jungly-looking shore next to us, with its big aloes and agaves growing before the bush, and all sorts of cocoas, palms, monkey-bread, and tall white-flaked cotton-trees, rising in every way out from over the rest. For my part, I thought more of the Portuguese's interest, after all, than his hatred—which proved correct, by his soon sending out a sulky message by the mulatto, offering to sell us fowls and a bullock, at no ordinary price. However, all hands from the cabin were mad already to get ashore somewhere, and the cadets bristling with fowling-pieces and rifles, each singing out that he was ready to supply the whole ship with fresh meat; so the mulatto had to sheer off, with a boat nearly lowered over his head. From where we lay at the time, what with the large creek off one bow, and the broad river ahead of us, spreading brimful along to the light, the water had the look of a huge lake, fringed in by a confused hazy bluish outline steeping in the heat, where the distance clipped behind the lumps of keen verdure, showering over a dark mangrove-covered point. Before the two large quarter-boats could be got ready for the ladies and the rest of us, in fact, we heard the gig full of writers and cadets beginning to pop away at everything they saw alive, out of sight from the ship; till at last we were afloat, too, pulling slowly into the middle of the stream, and the men eyeing us lazily as they turned-to about the rigging, to send up new spars in place of those lost. The old Indiaman's big bows stood looming up broad astern of us on the sluggish eddies round her cable, with her tall steady fore-spars and furled yards rising white against the low line of marshy shore in the distance, and wavering in her shadow below, till the thick green branches of the next point shut her out, and the glare off the face of the creek shot level over all of us in the two cutters, wild with every kind of feeling that India passengers could have after two months' voyage.

For my own part, I should have had rather a suspicion how absurd it was to go a pleasuring in an African river we knew nothing about, especially when I saw that a day or two so long after the rains might suck it up, during ebb, into a pretty narrow mid-channel: all I thought of was, however, that I was steering the boat with Violet Hyde in it, the kitmagar holding his gaudy punkah over her before me, while the Judge, with his gun in his hands, was looking out as eagerly, for the time, as the four griffins were pulling furiously, in spite of the heat that made the sweat run into their eyes.

The other party were soon off ahead of us up the main river, under care of the Scotch surgeon, laughing, talking, and holloing in chase of the cadets who had first left. However, Sir Charles thought there was more likelihood of game along the creek, and the ladies fancied it something new, so I steered right into it; the fat midshipman, Simm, watching me critically as I handled the yokelines which he had given up to me in a patronising way, and the sailor in the bow regarding the exertions of the griffins with a knowingly serious expression, while he dabbled his flipper at ease in the water. As the tide steadied, this said creek proved to be a smaller river, apparently from the hilly country I had noticed beyond the woods; by the clearness of its current, that showed the pale yellow reflection of the close bamboo-brake on one side, deep down into the light—the huge sharp green notched aloe-leaves and fern shoving here and there out of it—the close, rank, stifling smell of rotten weeds and funguses giving place to the strange wild scent of the flowers, trailing and twisting in thick snaky coils close up the stems on our opposite hand, and across from branch to branch, with showers of crimson and pink blossoms and white stars; till, eager as the ladies were to put foot on land, 'twas no use looking as yet for a spot of room, let alone going farther in. The cadets were not long in being blown, either; when the midshipman, the bowman, and I had to relieve them. However, then I could look straight toward Violet Hyde's face, the shade of the scarlet punkah hanging over it, and her soft little straight nose and forehead catching a flickering burst from the leaves as we sheered at times under cover of the bank; while her eyelids, dropping from the glare, gave her bright eyes a half-sleepy sort of violet look, and it was only her lips that let you see how excited she felt. The griffin who had the tiller steering with the judgment of a tailor's 'prentice on a picnic to Twickenham, we came two or three times crash into the twigs of some half-sunk tree; then a blue bird like a heron would rise direct ahead of us, with its tall wet spindle legs and spurs glistening like steel behind it into the light, and a young snake in its sharp bill; or a gray crane rustled out of the cane from overhead, its long wings creaking in the air out of our sight. Suddenly you heard a long chirruping croak from a tree-frog, and the ground ones gave full chorus from farther in, whining and cackling, and peep-peep-peeping in one complete rush that died as suddenly away again, like thousands of young turkeys—then out in the midst of the quiet would come a loud clear wheetle-wheetling note from some curious fowl in an opening, with another of the same to match, dimmer amongst the thick of the bush. However everything of the kind seemed to sink down with the heat at noon, the very buzz of flies round every dark feather of the cocoas, and the musquito hum along the bank, getting fainter; till one heard the heat, as it were, creeping and thrilling down through the woods, with the green light that steeped into both edges of the long creek; every reed, cane, leaf, and twig, seemingly, at last giving it back again with a whispering, hushing crackle, and the broad fans of the palms tingling in it with rays from them, as they trembled before you in the glare, back into the high bundles of knotted and jointed bamboo, with their spiky-tufted crowns.

"Can you not almost feel the forest grow!" exclaimed Miss Hyde; while the boat floated quietly to one side, and her charming young face shining out from the punkah, before Master Gopaul's deucedly ugly one, coolly staring past his snub nose, made one think of a white English rose and a black puff-ball growing together under a toadstool; plenty of which, as red as soldiers' coats, and as big as targets, looked here and there out of the bank. It put new spirit into me to see her, but still we could do little more than shove across from one side to the other—till something all at once roused us up in the shape of a long scaly-like log, seemingly lying along in the sun, which tumbled off the edge with a loud splash, and two of the young fellows let drive from their fowling-pieces, just after the alligator had sunk to the bottom. Rather uncomfortable it was to come sheering right over him next moment, and catch a glimpse of his round red eyes and his yellow throat, as the mud and weeds rose over him. The other ladies shrieked, but Violet Hyde only caught hold of her father's arm and started back; though her blue eye and the clear cut of her pretty nostril opened out, too, for the moment her lips closed. Five minutes after, when a couple of large guinea-fowl sprang up, Sir Charles proved himself a better shot than the cadets, by dropping one of them over the water ahead of us, which was laid hold of by the reefer of the Indiaman, and stowed away fluttering into the stern-locker—Simm observing coolly that it was a scavengering carrion-sort of bird, but perhaps one of his messmates might like to take it home stuffed to his sister. The Judge merely smiled and patted the mid on the shoulder, remarking in great good-humour that he, Simm, would make a good attorney; and on we held, soaking to our shirts and panting, until the bowman hooked down the stem of a young plantain, with a huge bunch of full ripe yellow bananas under the long flapping leaves at its head, right into the midst of us, out of a whole clump of them, where the smooth face of the cove showed you their scarlet clusters of flowers and green round pods hanging over it, hidden as they were from above. Every man of us made a clutch, and the stem almost lifted Simm out of the boat with it, as it sprang back into the brake, rousing out a shower of gaudy-coloured butterflies, and a cloud of musquitoes, and making the paroquets scream inside; while the cadets' mouths were so full they couldn't speak, the reefer making a gulp with the juice seeming to come out at his eyes, the sailor spitting out his quid and stuffing in a banana, and the ladies hoping they were safe to eat; as I peeled the soft yellow rind off, and handed one to Violet Hyde, which she tasted at once. But if ever one enters into the heart of things in the tropics, I'd say 'tis when that same delicious taste melts through and through and all over you, after chewing salt junk for a space. I remember one foremast-man, who was always so drunk ashore he used to remember nothing in India but "scoffing[20] one bloody benanny," as he called it; "but hows'ever, Jack," he'd say, "'twas blessed good, ye know, and I'm on the look-out for a berth again, jist for to go and have another." One of us looked to the other, and Miss Hyde laughed and coloured a bit when I offered her a second, while her father said full five minutes after, "'Gad, Violet, it almost made me think I saw Garden Reach in the Hooghly, and the Baboo's Ghaut!"

This whole time we couldn't have got more than three-quarters of a mile from where the ship lay, when all at once the close growth on our left hand began to break into low bush, and at length a spot offered where we might get ashore tolerably, with two or three big red ant-hills heaped up out of the close prickly-pear plant, and the black ants streaming over the bank, as well as up the trunk of a large tree. The monkies were keeping up a chattering stir everywhere about; and two or three bright-green little lizards changing into purple, and back again, as they lay gleaming in the sun on the sides of the ant-heaps, and darted their long tongues out like silver bodkins at the ants coming past. In we shoved with a cheer, and had scarce moored to the tree ere the ladies were being handed out and tripping over the ground-leaves to the ankles, starting on again at every rustle and prick, for fear of snakes; till the bowman in charge was left in the boat by himself, and, there being seven of us with guns over our arms, the next notion of the griffins was to get a sight of some "natives."

In fact there was a sort of a half track leading off near the bank, through among the long coarse grass and the ferny sprouts of young cocoas, and a wide stretch of open country seen beyond it, dotted all over with low clumps of trees and bush rounded off in the gush of light, that gave it all a straw-coloured tint up to where a bare reddish-looking ridge of hill looked over a long swell of wild forest, off a hot, pale, cloudless sky. Here and there you saw the shadow of one bluff lying purple on the side of another, and a faint blue peak between, letting north'ard into some pass through the hills, but no signs of life save a few dun big-headed buffaloes feeding about a swampy spot not very far off, and rather too shaggy, by all appearance, to make pleasant company. Accordingly, we held for a few yards under the shade, where the fat mid, thinking to show off his knowingness by getting cocoa-nuts for the ladies, began to shy balls of mud from the creek-side at the monkeys in the trees. However, he brought us rather more than he bargained for, till the whole blessed jungle seemed to be gathering between us and the boat to pelt us to death with nuts as big as eighteen-pound shot, husks and all; so off we had to hurry into the glare again, Sir Charles half carrying his daughter through guinea-grass up to the waist—when somebody felt the smell of smoke, and next minute we broke out near it, wreathing up white from inside a high bamboo fence, propped up and tied all along with cocoa-nut husk. "What the devil!" shouted the foremost cadet, as soon as he found the opening, "they're cannibals!—roasting a black child, by heaven!" and in he dashed, being no chicken of a fellow ashore at any rate, the others after him, while the Judge, Simm, and I, kept outside with the ladies, who were all of a shudder, of course, what with the thought, and what with the queer scent of roast meat that came to us. "Ha, ha!" laughed the cadet next moment, "it's only a monkey, after all!—come in, though, Sir Charles, if you please, sir,—nobody here, ladies." There, accordingly, was the little skinned object twirling slowly between two bamboo sticks, over a fire beneath two or three immense green leaves on a frame, with its knees up not to let its legs burn; about a dozen half-open sheds and huts, like little corn-stacks, thatched close with reeds, and hung with wattled mats of split bamboo, giving the place more the look of a farmyard than a village; as there was a big tree spreading in the middle, a few plantains, yams, and long maize-stalks flowering out of the coarse guinea-grass which the niggers hadn't taken the trouble to tread down all round inside of the fence. However, we weren't long of perceiving an old gray-headed black sitting on his hams against the post of a hut, watching us all the time; and a villanously ugly old thief he looked, with a string of Aggry beads about his head, and a greegree charm-bag hung round his shrivelled neck, which was stuck through a hole in some striped piece of stuff that fell over to his knees, as he sat mumbling and croaking to himself, and leering out of the yellows of his eyes, though too helpless to stir. Something out of the way attracted my notice, glittering in front of the hut over his head; but, on stepping up to it, I wasn't a little surprised to find it the stern-board of some small vessel or other, with the tarnished gilt ornament all round, and the name in large white letters,—"Martha Cobb,"—the port, Boston, still to be made out, smaller, below. This I didn't think so much of in itself, as the craft might have been lost; till, on noticing that the old fellow's robe was neither more nor less than a torn American ensign, in spite of his growls and croaks I walked past him into the hut, where there was a whole lot of marlinspikes, keys, and such like odds and ends, carefully stored up in a bag, marked with the same name, besides a stewpan with some ostrich feathers stuck where the handle had been, as if this rascally black sinner wore it on his head on state occasions, being probably the head-man and a justice of the peace! What struck me most, though, was a pocket-book with a letter inside it, in a woman's hand, addressed to the master of the brig Martha Cobb; dated a dozen years before, yellow and fusty, and with tarry finger-marks on it, as if the poor skipper, God knows, had read it over and over in his cabin many a fresh breeze betwixt there and Boston. I put it in my pocket, with a curse to the old black devil, as he croaked out and fell on his face trying to bite me with his filed teeth when I passed out, to follow the rest out of the bamboo pen; wondering, of course, where all the negroes could be, unless they were dodging about the river shore to watch the Indiaman,—little chance as there was of their trying the same joke with the Seringapatam, as with the Martha Cobb.

As for the women, however, I had scarce joined our party going out, when we met a half-naked black hag with a bunch of cocoa-nuts and husk. The moment she saw us she gave a squeal like an old hen, and fell flat, while several younger ones, jogging along with their naked black picaninnies on their backs, turned tail and were off with a scream. Next minute we were almost as startled as they could be, when three plump young jetty damsels dropped down right into the bushes alongside of us, off as many tall cocoas which they'd been climbing by a band round them, for the nuts. "Mercy on us!" said the eldest of our lady-passengers: and it was rather queer, since they had nothing earthly upon them save very very short pet—I beg your pardon ma'am, but I didn't know any other word—however off they scampered for the woods, Simm and one of the cadets hard after them, and we turning away to smother our laughter, especially as the griffin had forgot his mother being with us. The middy being first started, he was a good way ahead, when all at once the sternmost of the black girls tripped in the band she had over her shoulder, Simm giving a cheer as he made prize of his chase; but scarce before the whole three of the dark beauties had him smothered up amongst them, laughing, yelling, and squalling as they hauled him about; till I saw the dirk Simm sported glitter in one of their hands, and I made towards the spot in the notion of their finishing him in right earnest. The black damsels ran off together as the unlucky reefer picked himself up, coming to us with his hair rubbed up like a brush, his cap out of shape in his hand and the gold band off it, his red face shining, and all the gilt anchor-buttons off his jacket, besides being minus his dirk. "Simm! Simm! my fine fellow!" said his friend the cadet, like to die with laughing, "what—what—did they do to you? why, your head looks like a chimney-sweep's mop!" Simm knocked his cap against a tree to set it right, without a word, and we followed the others to the boat, where he swore, however, that he'd kissed 'em all three; at which Mrs Atkins fairly took him a slap on the side of the head, saying he was a nasty improper boy, and she was glad his poor mother couldn't see him run after creatures of that kind in African woods—"Natives, indeed!" said she, "I have heard so often of native modesty, too, in books; but, after all, there's nothing like experience, I think, Sir Charles?" "Certainly not, ma'am," replied the Judge, humouring her, as she hadn't often had the chance of speaking to him before; "'tis almost as bad in India, though, you know!" "Oh, there, Sir Charles," said the lady, "I never happened to go out, of course, except in the carriage!" "Ah," said the Judge coolly, "you should try an elephant sometimes, ma'am."

After this, as Sir Charles was bent on getting a shot at something better, with a glass or two of Madeira to refresh us, we pulled farther still up the small river, passing the mouth of a deep marshy inlet, where I noticed a few long canoes belonging to the Congo village we had seen; the close, heavy heat of the woods getting if possible worse, and the rank green growth topping up round us as flat as before; when the sound of a loud rush of water up-stream broke upon us through the bush to northward, the surface rippling, and a slight cool breath seeming to flutter across it now and then, the very noise putting fresh soul into you. Suddenly we opened out on a broad bend where it was hard work to force her round, and next moment a low fall was gleaming before us, where a hill-stream came washing and plashing over one wide rocky step above another in the turn, then sweeping out of a deep pool to both hands, and running away ahead, in between the spread of trees, seemingly to a sort of a lagoon, where you saw the light in the middle glancing bright down upon its face. A broad blue burst of air and light struck down along the hollow the stream rushed out of, off the roots of a regular mountain, leaning back to the sky, with its big tufted knolls and its shady rifts thrown out blue beyond one or two thick scaly-stemmed date-trees, waving their long, feathery, fringe-like leaves to the least bit of a breeze, on as many rough points near at hand: the whole shape of the mountain you couldn't see for the huge mahogany trees, teak, and African oak, rising up over one shoulder into a lump of green forest. In five minutes more we were through into the lagoon, which very possibly took round into the main river again, only the opposite end, to our surprise, was all afloat with logs of big timber choking it up, so that there we must stick or go back upon our wake.

However, the lagoon itself being broad enough and round enough in all conscience, with a deep hollow opening up out of it on the high ground, the Judge and the cadets thought a better place couldn't have been chosen for landing after a little sport, while we left the fair ladies to rest in the cool, and look at the lotus-lilies spread all over one cove of it, floating white on their large leaves. The green edge of scum ran about the black shadow on the rest of it, gathering round where a big branch or two had fallen in, with the hot white sky looking bluer out through the broad leaves coming together aloft, and the showers of little sharp ones in the tamarind twigs, mangoes, iron-wood, sumach, and all sorts; while here and there a knot of crimson blossoms looked out from under the boughs in the dark, humming with small flies. Beautiful spot as it was everyway, especially after the heat, yet I didn't much like the idea of letting the ladies stay by themselves, except the sailor and the kitmagar. Nothing particular had turned up to trouble us, certainly; but I daresay 'twas because there was one of them I never looked at without her soft fairy-like air making me think of something that might happen to her, life-like though she seemed. When I saw a big branch over her head, I kept fancying what it would do if it fell— and now, the thumping slabs and stones we scrambled over up into the gully toward the mountain, seemed to have come tumbling down off it to the very water's edge, covered with nets of thick creeping plants, and trails of flat fingery-leaved flowers, such as you see in hot-houses at home. A few yards higher, too, where the ground broke away into a slanting hollow out of the bush, 'twas all trampled and crushed, half-withering together in the heat of the sun, the young trees twisted and broken, and two or three good-sized ones lying out from the roots, which I set to the score of the timberers rolling down their logs, for some craft that evidently got their cargoes hereaway. After all, the thought of a slap at some wild game was tempting enough, the Judge appearing to consider any one but a sportsman nobody at all: so up we went behind him out of the gully, till we were all blowing like so many porpoises on the head of it, Sir Charles raising his finger as we peeped across a grassy slope right under us, where a whole drove of small slender-legged antelopes were feeding. We had just time to rest, getting a breath of air off the heights, when one of the foremost lifted its head, listening the opposite way from us; next moment the entire scatter of them came sweeping direct over to leeward in a string,—we could almost catch their bright black eyes through the grass, when the crack of our seven barrels turned them bolt off at a corner, and they were gone like wind on water. All of us had missed save Sir Charles Hyde; but his rifle-bullet had sent one of the antelopes springing up in the air ten feet or so, rolling over and over into the grass again, where we found it lying with its tongue out, and its large eye glazing amongst the blades and dust—a pair of huge turkey-buzzards falling, as it were, out of two specks in the sun above us, already, and rising with an ugly flap while we got round the dead creature.

"Hallo!" said the mid, suddenly, looking back over toward the hollow we'd come out of; "what's that?"

From where we stood we could just see through the wild cane to the mouth of the gully, half a mile down or more, leading upon the trees by the lagoon. I thought I could hear a dull heavy sound now and then going thump thump down the hollow and along it, the stones rumbling from one spot to another at the root of the hill; but noticing a light smoke rising farther into the course of the creek, with a faint echo of axes at work somewhere in the woods below, I wasn't sorry to find the timberers were still in the river, showing we weren't the only civilised folks that thought it fit to visit. Perhaps it might have been a quarter of an hour more, however, and we were all looking out sharp for birds of any kind to pop at, happening to turn my head, I saw the long reeds were moving about the banks below, and the trees twisting about furiously; and no sooner had I made a few paces than, good heavens!—right in the break of the trees at the landing-place—there was a huge brute of some sort coming slowly up out of the water; then another, and another, glistening wet in the bright light as the shadow of the branches slipped behind them. A blindness came over my eyes, and I had scarce time to make out the big block-like heads and moving trunks of five or six black African elephants, ere the whole case flashed upon me, and away I dashed full speed down the slope. The big beasts were turning quietly off into the hollow, and two or three of their calves trotted after them out of the bushes, munching the young cane-stalks as they lifted their pillars of legs, and their tufty little tails, when I passed a fire of sticks blazing under a slab of rock, with the Judge's guinea-fowl plucked and roasting before it from a string, the bowman's tarpaulin and his pipe lying near by—a sight that doubled the horror in me, to know he had left the boat at all; and no doubt, as I thought, taken fright and run off, man-o'-war's-man though he was. I made three springs over the stones down to the water, terrified to look in, hearing it, as I did, splash and wash about the sides, up among the leaves of the trees; while a couple of monstrous brutes were to be seen by the light in the midst of it, still wallowing about, and seeming to enjoy sending the whole pool in wide rings and waves as far as it would go, with the noise besides: the one half swimming, and the biggest standing aground as he poured the water out of his long trunk all over his back, then broke off a branch and waved it to and fro like a fan round his flapping leathery ears.

Such a moment I hope never to know again—not the least sign of the boat could I see in the green black blink of the place, after the glare above; and I stood like a madman at the thought of what the herd of monsters had done, when they came suddenly down upon it; then I gave a wild cry, and levelled my ship's musket at the big elephant's head, as he brought his small cunning eye slowly to bear upon me, dropped the branch, and began to swing his forehead, all the time looking at me and wading out to the shallow—by Jove! my flesh creeps at it just now—though I couldn't have stirred for worlds till he was close enough for me to fire into that devilish eye of his. 'Twas no more than the matter of half a minute—till you may fancy what I felt to catch sight all at once of the cutter splashing up and down in the gloom below the branches, the ladies and the Hindoo crouching down terrified together, except Violet Hyde, who stood straight, holding the boat firm in by a bough, her white face fixed through the shadow, and her hair floating out of her straw-bonnet each time her head went up among the leaves, with her glittering eyes on the two elephants. Suddenly some heavy black figure dropped almost right over her into the boat, and she let go with a low cry, and sank down with her hands over her eyes; when they went sheering out towards the creek, the fore-topman handling his boat-hook in her bow, without his tarpaulin. As for the wild elephants, I had just time to come to myself before the foremost had his feet on the stones below me, getting cautiously out of the pool; these awkward antics of theirs being possibly signs of too much satisfaction in a bathe, for them to show aught like fury, if you didn't rouse them; so I was slipping quietly round the nearest tree when I heard the cadets halloing up the hill. The old bull-elephant seemed a dangerous customer to meet, and I was hurrying over the dead grass and branches to give warning, just as Sir Charles Hyde could be seen coming down before the rest, his rifle over his shoulder. However he brought up, the moment I sang out to stop: both the elephants were stalking off lower down into the hollow, and I dropped behind the slab where Tom Wilkes had been roasting his bird, when some fool of a cadet let drive at the bull-elephant from above, hitting him fair on the front. You heard the rifle-bullet hit slap against it as if on an anvil: the she-elephant made off at a fast trot, but the big brute himself turned round on the moment, lifting his trunk straight aloft with a sharp trumpeting scream through it, and looked round till his small red eye lighted on the Judge, who seemed quite out of breath from his sport.

"The fire! that fire, for God's sake, Mr Westwood, else I am lost!" called out Sir Charles, in a calm distinct key from where he stood with his eye fixed on the elephant, and could see me, too,—a moment or two before the huge round-backed lump of a brute came running round into the track, stumbling heavily up the dead branches of the fallen trees and the dry guinea-grass, with a savage roar between his two white tusks—and I saw what the Judge meant, just in time to throw over the whole heap of flaming cocoa-tree husk among the withered grass and stuff a few yards before the monster, as dry as tinder, while the light air coming down the gully of the mountain, drove it spreading across his course up through the twigs, and sweeping in one sudden gust of fire up to the very end of his trunk. I saw it lift over the smoke like a black serpent, then another scream from the brute, and away he was charging into the hollow again, the flame licking up among the grass astern of him, and darting from one bough to another towards the cane-brake below. I had scarce drawn a long breath, and remembered the devil's own thought that had come into my head when the Judge called to me, ere he slapped me on the shoulder. "You did nobly there, my dear boy," said Sir Charles; "managed it well! 'Gad, it was a crisis, though, Mr Westwood!" "I'm afraid, however, sir," said I, eying the crackling bushes, smoking and whitening to a dead smoulder in the sunlight, then flashing farther down as the hill-breeze rustled off, "I'm afraid we shall have the woods burning about our ears!" Down we hurried accordingly, and hailed the cutter, where scarce had we leisure to pass a few quick words and tumble in, before I heard a shout beyond the other turn of the creek, through the end of the lagoon; then something like the cheep of ropes through blocks, with the bustle of men's feet on a deck, and next minute a perfect hubbub of cries, whether Dutch, Portuguese, English, or all together, I couldn't say,—only it wasn't likely the last would kick up such a bother for nothing. Four or five Kroomen came leaping round and along the float of logs at the far end, their large straw hats shining in the light over their jet faces, as they peered across into the lagoon. The minute after they vanished, we saw the white upper spars of a schooner slide above the farthest of the wood, and her bowsprit shoved past the turn just enough to show her sharp lead-coloured bow, with the mouth of a gun out of a port, and a fellow blowing the red end of his match behind it. All at once the chorus of shouts and cries ceased, and a single voice sang out along the water, clear, stern, and startling, in bad Portuguese, "Queren sietÉ? who are you?" Still we gave no answer, quietly shoving off as fast as we could, the flicker of the fire in the brake behind the trees beginning to show itself through the black shade of the lagoon. "Queren siete?" sang out the voice, louder than before, in a threatening way, and the logs were knocking and plashing before the schooner as the Kroomen hauled at them to make an opening. "Amigos! Amigos!" hailed we in turn; "Ingleses, gentlemen!" shouted the cadet who knew Portuguese, calling to them not to fire, for heaven-sake, else they would do us some harm. With this, the hubbub was worse than before; they plainly had some design on us, from the confusion that got up; but by that time we were pulling hard into the narrow of the river, and took the fair current of it as soon as the boat was past the falling stream we had seen before, till we were round into the next reach.

In fact the rate we all bent our backs at this time, was pretty different from coming up: the cadets seemed hardly to feel the heat, fierce and close though it was, at thought of those that might be in our wake, and nobody spoke a word at ease till at last, after an hour's hard work, taking it in turns, we came full in sight of the Indiaman at her anchor on the broad current. The ladies blessed the very ropes hanging from her bowsprit, and we got safe aboard, where we found the two other boats had come back long before; and every one of us turned in directly after sundown, as tired as dogs.

Well, I didn't suppose I had slept an hour, dreaming terribly wild sort of dreams about Violet Hyde and elephants, then that I'd saved her myself, and was stooping to kiss her rosy lips, when a sudden noise on deck startled me,—I shoved myself into my clothes and rushed on the quarterdeck. She had gone aground at her stern in swinging, in the water the Portuguese rascal gave her, canted a little over to starboard, away from the shore; and till morning flood nothing could be done to haul her off. The fog was rolling down with the land-breeze, and the jabber in the woods, again, thickened the confusion; when all at once a dim flash off the shore glimmered in the white fog, and a round-shot whistled just astern, pretty well aimed for her bilge, which would have cost us some work if it had hit. After that, however, there was no more of it, the fellow probably having spent either all his powder or his balls. As for his fort, I heard the chief officer swearing he would knock it about his ears next day—a thing that couldn't have done him much harm, certainly, unless mud were dear.

No sooner had the men gone below, leaving the ordinary anchor-watch, than Mr Finch, to my great surprise, walked up to me, and gave me a strange suspicious look, hinting that he began to have a good guess of what I really was, but if anything new of the kind turned up, said he, he should know better what to say to me. "Mr Finch," said I, starting, "this won't do, sir—you'll either speak your mind before cabin and cuddy, or to-morrow morning, by Jove! you'll go quietly ashore with me, sir—as I think, now you remind me of it, we settled to do, already!" The mate's face whitened, and he eyed me with a glare of malice, as I turned on my heel and began to walk the quarterdeck till he went below.

However, the thought of the thing stuck to me, and I kept walking in the dark to get rid of it: the four or five men of the anchor-watch shuffling lazily about, and all thick save ahead up the river, where the land-breeze blew pretty strong, bringing now and then a faint gleam out of the mist. I was leaning against the fore-chains, listening to the ebb-tide, and thinking; when I saw one of the men creeping in from the bowsprit, which you just saw, where it ran up thick into the dusk, with scarce a glimpse of the jib-boom and flying-jib-boom beyond. The sailor came up touching his hat to me, and said he thought he saw something queer off the boom-end. "Well," said I gruffly, "go and tell your mate, then." I didn't know the fellow's voice, though it had a particular twang in it, and he wasn't in Jacob's watch, I knew. "Why, your honour," he persisted, "I knows pretty well what you air—asking your pardon, sir—but I think you'd make more out of it nor any of the mates!—It's some'at rather skeary, sir!" added he. Accordingly I took hold of the man-ropes and swung myself up the bowsprit, and had my feet on the foot-rope below the jib-boom, when I heard his breath, following behind me. "Never you trouble yourself, my man," said I; "one at a time!" and back he went in board again—for something curious in his way struck me, but I wanted to see what he meant. I had just got near the flying-jib, half-stowed in as it was on the boom, and I fancied, with a creep of my blood in me, I made out a man's head over the sail; but next moment a hand like a vice caught me by the throat, and some one growled out—"Now ye infarnal man-o'-war hound, I have ye—and down you goes for it!" The instant I felt it, my coolness came back; as for grappling, I couldn't, and the ebb current ran below to her bows at a rate fit to carry one out to sea in half an hour. I saw the whole plot in a twinkling, and never moved; instead of that I gave a sort of laugh, and followed the husky twang of the other man to a tee. "He won't come, Harry, my lad!" said I, and my ugly friend let go before he had time to think twice. "He be blowed!" said Harry, scornfully; "an' why won't he, mate?" He had scarce the words out of his mouth, though, ere I took him a twist that doubled him over the spar, and down he slipped, hanging by a clutch of the sail. "I suppose, my fine fellow," said I, "you forgot Fernando Po, and those nigger adventures of yours—eh?"—and I went in without more ado.

I hadn't been ten minutes on deck, however, when I heard both of them swearing something or other to the first mate. A little after Finch came forward to me, with a ship's-lantern, and three or four of the men behind. "Mr Collins, or whatever's your name, sir," said he aloud, "I believe you've been seen just now at the bowsprit-end, making signals or something to the shore! You're in arrest at once, sir, and no more about it!" "What the deuce!" said I, my blood up, and pulling out a pair of pocket-pistols I had had in the boat, "let me see the man to—" At the moment a blow of a handspike from near the mast laid me senseless on the deck, and I knew nothing more.——But I see 'tis too far gone in the night to carry out the yarn, ladies!