With Cochrane the Dauntless. Henty George Alfred
not killed before that, and you can guess my feelings when I became convinced that it was really you. How did you know what had happened?”
“You must have been insensible for a good bit, Tom. We heard the firing, and thought that there was too much of it for shooting monkeys, and that you must have been attacked, so we made our way along among the bushes by the bank. Presently the two canoes came down, and we made out some heads in the stern of each boat. They went to the mouth of the river, to see, no doubt, if there was a ship there. They came back again in half an hour. We tried to count the heads, and both of us thought that there were about the same number in each boat. Of course we could not be sure, but we determined to come on to the village and find out for certain. I climbed up a high tree a short distance from it—the one where we came upon the cocoa-nuts—and made you out lying beside a hut. I knew by the white ducks that it was either you or poor Towel. Then we worked round, waited until the village had gone off to sleep, and then came for you. You see the Malays had no idea that there were any more whites about, and therefore took no trouble about you. No doubt they thought that the boat had escaped from a wreck, and that all who had got away in her had gone up the river together. Ah! there is a cocoa-nut. I am glad our walk is over, for I am beginning to feel hot and thirsty.”
“So am I, and stiff and sore all over.”
The cocoa-nut tree was the first of a grove. Stephen, who was by far the most active of the party, soon climbed one of the trees, and threw a score of nuts down. They went a little distance further back into the forest. Each consumed the contents of four nuts, then two of them lay down to sleep again, while the other kept watch. The march was not resumed until after sunset. They had another meal of cocoa-nuts before they started, and each took three nuts for use on the journey. They again walked at the edge of the water, as they had done the day before. It was by far the pleasantest way, and they kept on until daylight appeared, and then again went into the wood.
“I should think now,” Stephen said, as after a good sleep they ate a cocoa-nut breakfast, “that we need not bother any more about the Malays of that village. It is quite possible that we passed another last night, though of course the sand-hills would have prevented our seeing it. The question is now, what are we to do next?”
“That is what I was thinking all the time that we were walking last night,” Joyce said. “We can’t keep on tramping and living on cocoa-nuts for ever.”
“That is quite certain, Tom, but there is no reason why we should do so. There must be some villages on this coast, and when we start this evening I vote we keep along here instead of going down to the water. Where there is a village there must be fishing canoes, and all we have got to do is to take one, and put to sea. I don’t mean to say that we can get in and push straight away, for we must have some provisions; but when we have found a village we can hide up near it, and get as many cocoa-nuts as we can carry. Besides, there are sure to be bananas and other fruit-trees close by, and after laying our cocoa-nuts down by the edge of the water, we can go up and cut as many bananas as we like, and then we shall have enough food to last us ten days or so. There is one comfort, wherever we may land there cannot be a worse lot of Malays than there are about here.”
“That is a capital plan, Master Stephen,” Wilcox said. “I have not been thinking of a village, except as to how to get past it; but, as you say, there is no reason why we should not make off in a canoe.”
The next night they kept along just inside the trees, and had walked but two hours when they found that these ended abruptly, and that they stood on the edge of a clearing.
“Here is your village, Stephen.”
“Yes; one hardly hoped to find one so soon. Well, the first thing is to go down and search in the sand-hills for canoes.”
Four or five were found lying together in a hollow some twenty yards beyond high-water mark. They examined them carefully.
“Any of them will do,” Wilcox said, “but I think this is the best one. It is a little larger than the others, and the wood feels newer and sounder. I expect she is meant for four paddlers, and she will carry us and a fair cargo well.”
“That is settled, then,” Stephen said. “I propose that we go back some little distance from the village, get our cocoa-nuts at once, and bring them back and hide them in the bushes not far from where the clearing begins. It will save time to-morrow.”
“Why should we not go to-night?” Joyce asked. “It is only about nine o’clock now, and if we get the cocoa-nuts near here, we can make two or three journeys down to the boat with them, and be off before midnight.”
“So we might, Tom. What do you say, Wilcox?”
“The sooner the better, says I,” the sailor replied. “As Mr. Joyce says, we can be off by eight bells easy, and we shall be out of sight of this village long before daybreak.”
“Well, Wilcox, will you and Mr. Joyce get the cocoa-nuts, and while you are doing it I will creep round this clearing and get bananas. I can see lots of their broad leaves over there. As I get them I will bring them to this corner, and by the time you have got a store of nuts, I shall have a pile of bananas. I think you had better go four or five hundred yards away before you cut the nuts, for they come down with such a thump that any native who is awake here might very well hear them.”
“We will go a bit away, sir,” Wilcox said, “but if we take pains to let them drop each time just as there is a puff of wind, there is no fear of their hearing them.”
They separated, and Stephen, entering the clearing, soon came upon a banana tree with long bunches of the fruit. Two of these were as much as he could carry, and his portion of the work was soon done, and indeed he had carried them down to the water’s edge before his companions had brought three loads of cocoa-nuts to the point where he had left them. He helped to take these down, then the canoe was lifted and carried to the edge of the water, being taken in far enough to float each time the surf ran up. Then the fruit was placed in it.
“I wish we had poor Mr. Towel with us to take her through the surf,” Wilcox said.
“I wish we had; but fortunately it is not very heavy.”
“No, sir; it is sure not to be,” the sailor said. “I have noticed that they always put their villages at points where the surf is lighter than usual. I suppose the water is shallower, or deeper, or something. I don’t know what it is, but there is certainly a difference. Besides, there has been no wind to speak of since we landed, and the waves are nothing to what they were then. Now, gentlemen, as I am more accustomed to this sort of thing than you are, I will take the place in the stern, where I can steer her a bit. The moment she floats as the surf comes in, and I see the chance is a good one, I will give the word; then we will all paddle as hard as we can, and go out as the surf draws back, so as to meet the next wave before it breaks. Everything depends on that.”
They took their places in the canoe, and grasped the paddles that they had found in her. Two or three waves passed under them, and then they saw one higher than the others approaching them.
“We will go out on the back of this one,” Wilcox said. “Paddle the moment the surf lifts the canoe, and don’t let her be washed up a foot.”
The wave fell over with a crash, and a torrent of foam rushed up towards them.
“Now,” Wilcox exclaimed, as the white line reached the bow, “paddle for your lives!”
For a moment, in spite of their desperate efforts, they were carried upwards, then the canoe seemed to hang in the air, and they were riding forward with the speed of an arrow on the receding water.
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