Their voyage was almost at its end. They were in sight of the goal.
Black, trailing lines of smoke, from the coasting-steamers at the mouth of the river, flecked the clear brilliancy of the azure sky.
Edwin was as much afraid as Whero of another chance encounter. Audrey might turn up to stop him. Some one might be sending her home by water, who could say? Another of the shipwrecked sailors might be watching for a coaster to take him on board. So he lay down in the bottom of the canoe as if he were asleep, and Whero pulled the rushes over him.
CHAPTER XIX.
MET AT LAST.
The boys were recovering their equanimity, when the stiff sea-breeze blowing in their faces scattered the rushes and sent them sailing down the stream.
Whero drew his canoe to the bank as they came to a quiet nook where rushes were growing abundantly, that he might gather more.
Whero was out of his latitude, in a terra incognita, where he knew not how to supply the want of a dinner. How could he stop to discover the haunts of the wild ducks to look for their eggs? How could he reach the cabbage in the top of those tall and graceful ti trees, which shook their waving fronds in the wintry breezes? Ah! if it had been summer, even here he would not have longed in vain. His bundle of rushes was under his arm, when he noticed a hollow willow growing low to the river-side. A swarm of bees in the recent summer had made it their home, and their store of winter honeycomb had filled the trunk. Swarms of bees gone wild had become so frequent near the English settlements, wild honey was often found in large quantities. But to Whero it was a rare treat. He was far too hungry to be able to pass it by. He scrambled up the bank, and finding the bees were dead or torpid with the cold, he began to break off great pieces of the comb, and lay them on his rushes to carry away.
As he was thus engaged a man came through the clustering ti trees and asked him to give him a bit.
Whero was ready enough to share his spoils with the stranger, for there was plenty. As he turned to offer the piece he had just broken off, he saw he was an ill-looking man, with his hat slouched over his eyes, carrying a roll of pelts and a swag at the end of a stick, which had evidently torn a hole through the shoulder of the wretched old coat the man was wearing.