“Yes, I was thinking something of the kind. It seems a shame, now we are on the slope, not to go right up and see the crater and the view of the whole island which we should get from there?”
The mate gave one of his ears a vexatious rub, and wrinkled up his forehead as he turned to give Drew a comical look.
“Yes; what is it?” said that gentleman.
“Oh, nothing, sir,” replied Mr Rimmer. “I was only thanking my stars that I wasn’t born to be a naturalist. For of all the unreasonable people I ever met they’re about the worst.”
“Why?” said Oliver, innocently.
“Why, sir!” cried the mate; “here have you been missing all this time, and by your own showing you’ve been nearly bitten by snakes and clawed by a leopard, suffocated, swallowed up, stuck on a bit of a bridge across a hole that goes down to the middle of the earth, and last of all nearly scorched like a leaf in a fireplace by that puff which came at us. And now, as soon as you have had a bite and sup, you look as if you’d like to tackle the mountain again.”
“Of course, that’s what I do feel,” said Oliver, laughing. “So do we all.”
“I’ll be hanged if I do!” cried Mr Rimmer. “The brig isn’t floating, I know, but she stands up pretty solid, and I feel as if I shall not be very comfortable till I’m standing upon her deck.”
“But we’ve come on a voyage of discovery,” said Panton.
“Yes, sir, that’s right enough, but we seem to have begun wrong way on. We want to discover things, and, instead, they keep discovering us. It’s just as if we’d no business here and the whole island was rising up against us.”