The spies, some of whom were negroes and the others half-castes, assured us that they had tracked the mutineers for some distance, and were well acquainted with the route they had taken, which was a beaten track leading straight into the interior. These swarthy fellows also asserted that a body of insurgents had accompanied the lawless crew of the Flying-fish in their retreat. We questioned them as to any knowledge they might have acquired with regard to the whereabouts of the valuable cargo which it was the object of our expedition to recover. About that they declared that they knew nothing whatever, although they confessed to having heard rumours that large bodies of men were passing and repassing between the shores of the creek and the spurs of the inland hills during the whole of the day before the Rattler’s arrival upon the scene.
“’Tis a good thing we’ve no field-guns and limber-waggons with us,” said Ned Burton to me as we marched along; “they’d have delayed us terribly, and prevented our making forced marches.”
“You think we’ll soon come up with them then?” said I. “For my own part I hope the fun won’t be over too soon. If we returned victorious in a couple of days, the fellows left on board would be sure to jeer at us, and say we had only gone for a sort of picnic into the mountains.”
“Ah, ’twill take more than a couple of days even under the most favourable circumstances,” answered Ned. “I take it these merchant-service fellows haven’t got marching-legs, so to speak, and are perhaps encumbered with wounded men, but still they’ve got a pretty fair start, you see, and that ain’t a thing to be sneezed at.”
“The difficulty will be to find where they have hidden away the booty,” I said; “no doubt the insurgents have put them up to a wrinkle or two, knowing every inch of the country as they do.”
“Doesn’t the Rattler look jolly?” exclaimed an enthusiastic voice at my elbow.
I turned and beheld Fitzgerald, who still had a slight limp as a legacy from the morning’s fracas.
“Poor old ‘hop-and-go-one,’ what’s he trying to say?” I asked in a jocose tone, and clapping him on the shoulder rather harder than was altogether necessary.
“‘Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?’” demanded Fitzgerald, tapping his sword-hilt with his left hand, and trying hard but very unsuccessfully not to laugh.
“‘I do bite my thumb, sir,’” I answered promptly, and trying to put on a swashbuckler air; “but I need not say that I should infinitely prefer to bite yours or even Mr. Triggs’s.”