“Perhaps so,” said Fitz, who was growing more good-humoured over his companion’s frank, genial ways; “but I feel more disposed to shut my eyes up now, and to have a good sleep.”
“Oh, don’t do that! There will be plenty of time when it gets dark, and before then I hope we shall be off the river. We are slipping along pretty quickly now, and old Burgess is creeping closer in. That’s his artfulness; it means looking out for creeks and islands, places where we could hide if the gunboat came into sight, or sneaking into shallows where she couldn’t follow. The old man knows what he is about, and so does father too. Here, let’s go and fetch a glass and get up aloft. I want to make out what the coast is like.”
The binocular was fetched from the cabin, and the lads mounted the rigging as high as they could to get comfortably perched, and then shared the glass, turn and turn, to come to the conclusion that every knot they crept along through the shallow sea brought them more and more abreast of a district that looked wild and beautiful in the extreme: low mountain gorge and ravine, beautiful forest clothing the slopes, and parts where the country was green with the waving trees almost to the water’s-edge.
And so the day slipped by, and the sun began to sink just as they glided into a narrow sheltered estuary, which, as far as they could make out, ran like a jagged gash inland; and an hour later the schooner was at anchor behind a headland which completely bid them from the open sea.
“There,” cried Poole, turning to the middy, who was sweeping the forest-clad slopes on either hand, “what do you think of this?”
“Lovely!” cried Fitz enthusiastically, forgetting all his troubles in the wondrous tropic beauty of the golden shores.
“Come on, then. I don’t know what Andy has got us for supper, but it smells uncommonly good.”
“Supper!” said the middy, in tones of disgust. “Why, you can’t leave a scene like this to go and eat?”
“Can’t I?” cried Poole. “Do you mean to tell me that you are not hungry too?”
“Well, no,” said Fitz, slowly, closing the glass; “I don’t think I can. I didn’t know how bad I was until you spoke.”