The men pulled hard, but the doctor shook his head and laid down his gun, for the pig’s snout disappeared with a horrible last gurgling wail.
“Yes, it’s in a terrible current,” said the doctor, “going down something’s throat.”
“What!” cried Jack, upon whom the truth now flashed.
“Yes, crocodile or shark has got him, my lad. Another warning not to try and bathe.”
“Yes, and to try and kill all the crocodiles and sharks we can.”
“Which comes natural to all men,” said the doctor.
“See that, Jack?” came from the other boat.
“Yes, father. Horrible.”
A soft wind began to fan them as they rounded a well-wooded point, and the men stepped small masts and ran up a couple of lug-sails which carried the boats swiftly gliding along over the hardly rippled water. But the lovely garden below was now blurred and almost invisible, so the attention of all was taken up by the shore along which they coasted, and for hours now they went on past cocoa-nut groves, park-like flat, lovely ravines running upward, and down which tiny rills of water came cascading; past three huge black buttresses of lava, the ends that had cooled in the water of as many streams of fluent stone; and above all, grey, strange, dotted with masses of rock, seamed, scored, and wrinkled, rose from out of the dense forest, which rail up its flanks, the great truncated cone, above whose summit floated a faint grey cloud of smoke or steam—which they could not tell.
But when mid-day arrived they had seen neither hut nor canoe, and in accordance with the captain’s instructions they rowed into the mouth of a little river and landed in a lovely shady ravine, whose waters at a couple of hundred yards from the lagoon were completely shaded by the boughs of ancient trees.