For our sweeps or paddles we bound two stout canes together, stretching them asunder at one end and covering that part with a broad tough grass.
In this craft we made our way up that river three days and four nights, only stopping to take such rest as was needful and to procure refreshment. Many difficulties and perils we encountered by the way, but of these I have no space to tell had I the inclination, for it seems as I write that I have the same burning impatience which urged me on then to come to my Lady Biddy. Every obstacle that delayed progress enraged me. I could scarcely bring myself to let my comrade get his fair and necessary amount of sleep, but would be twitching him to awake ere he had got soundly asleep; for as to one sleeping in the boat while the other rowed, that we found impossible, because there was no room to lie down there, and necessary it was, for fear of cramps, at times to take our feet out of the water, which we had no means to keep from coming in betwixt the reeds.
But Matthew bore with me, seeing my great anxiety of mind, and that I did not rest a quarter as much as he; and though he grumbled again (but chiefly in pretense), he roused himself after the second or third twitch, and did all man could to give me hope. Indeed, a fellow of gentler temper, a more cheerful, kind friend, I never knew of his sex.
Soon after daybreak on the fourth day, having been at our sweeps a couple of hours maybe, we spied some fishing-canoes moored by the shore, and some little cot-houses hard by, by which we judged we had come to the outskirts of Valetta. Whereupon we drew into the bank, and going up through the woods to the top of a little hill, came upon tilled fields, beyond which lay the town, very gray and quiet in the creeping light of that early morning.
"Now, master," says Matthew, "the first thing is to learn if De Pino and his train have yet arrived in the town; and we can't do that standing here looking at it."
"Nay," says I, "I'm ready to go into the town at once if you are. But we must be secret."
"Ay," says he; "and for that reason you will have to bide here."
"I can not do that," says I. "Think, Matthew—she may stand in need of my help. I shall be mad if I stay here idle."
"Not so mad," says he, "as if you venture into that town. Look at your state. Could any man clap eyes on you without pointing you out to his neighbor?"
Truly I was in a sad pickle—my fine clothes that I had of Dom Sebastian rent in a hundred places with the thorns through which we had torn our way in escaping by the woods; no hat to my head; my silk stockings stained with the blood from my scratched legs and the mud of the morass; and my hands and face swollen with the bite of those flies that haunt the river.