I put out my hand and leaned over the bags to touch Gleazen, the nearest of the sleepers, when Abe again pressed my arm. Turning, I saw that his finger was at his lips. Although his gesture puzzled me, I obeyed it, and we remained silent for a minute or two while the current carried the boat farther and farther downstream.
Every foot that we drifted back meant labor lost, and I was so sorely tempted to put an end to our silence that I was on the point of speaking out, when, distinctly, unmistakably, we heard another crackle in the bush.
"Pull," Abe whispered, "pull, Joe, as hard as you can."
I leaned back against my oar, heard the water gurgle from under it, saw bubbles go floating down past the stern, and knew that by one stroke we had stopped our drifting. With a second swing of the long blades, we sent the boat once more up against the current. Now we got back into the old rhythm and went on past the dense palms, until we again came to the tangled roots of mangroves.
Laying hold of one of the roots, Abe whispered, "Wake 'em, Joe!"
They woke testily, and with no thanks to us, even though it was by their orders that we called them.
In reply to their questions we told them the whole story, from the strange hush that came over the monkeys to the second crackling among the palms; but they appeared not to take our apprehensions seriously.
"Belike it was a snake," said O'Hara, "a big feller, Them big fellers will scare a monkey into fits."
"Or some kind of an animal," said Gleazen, curtly. "Didn't I say we was to be called at daylight? When I say a thing I mean it." He impatiently turned from us to his intimates. "How about it, Bud; shall we haul up here for the day?"
"Belike it was only a snake," O'Hara replied, "but 'twas near, despite of that. Push on, I say."