“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 [pg 99]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.”