“Oh, come, mate,” said Lang, the other boatman; “he’s right enough. We ought to know better than you, because we stopped with the boat.”
“Well, that’s why you don’t know, my lad,” said the big sailor. “All you did was to stop and sit cutting sticks or pegs. We others know better because we landed and went with the first luff right inland.”
“What of that?” said Lang. “You didn’t go about the river high-up or low down; so now then!”
“Don’t argue, my lads,” cried Murray sharply. “Pull, and let’s see if Lang and his fellow are right. For my part, I think we must be just about the place where we landed now. Why, yes; there, it’s just beyond that overhanging tree.”
“To be sure, sir,” said Tom May excitedly. “That’s the landing-place.”
“Right you are, mate,” cried the boat-keepers in a breath, “and there’s the sticks we whittled when we cut down that furren sapling to make pegs.”
A very few minutes’ pulling brought the little party to the landing-place from which the start had been made for the plantation, and Murray stood up in the boat, trying to settle in his own mind what the next step ought to be.
It was his greatest crisis of responsibility, and his face puckered up as he glanced at his men and grasped the fact that they were looking to him to lead. They were ready enough to obey his orders, but not to give him the advice which he needed at such a crucial time.
“What can I do?” he asked himself. “It is a horrible task, but I must let Mr Anderson know of my failure. I feel as if I could find my way up to the plantation house now; but I can’t leave the boat here, knowing that the enemy may follow us up the river and attack and capture it. That would be like cutting off Mr Anderson’s retreat. I can’t send one or two of the lads up to the house, for Tom May and Titely proved that they could lose themselves hopelessly, and if I sent the others they don’t know the way at all. There’s only one I feel as if I could trust—myself; and I can’t trust him. Oh, was ever a fellow in such a hole before!”
He stood thinking, and the longer he thought the worse off he seemed to be; and his position grew more painful as he realised the fact that his men were waiting for his orders; and, though they remained silent, they kept on casting glances down stream as if expecting to see the armed party of the enemy in pursuit.