It was waste of words, but the blacks understood that it was meant defiantly, and they lowered their spears and signed to their prisoners to go on.
“Oh yes,” cried Ned proudly, “we’ll go on. Can’t help ourselves, can we, Mr Jack? But don’t be down-hearted, sir. They haven’t killed us, and perhaps after all they may take us where we want to go down to the shore.”
But as they tramped on, with one of their captors leading the way, and the rest behind, keeping an eye upon the cane bonds which now held both prisoners’ wrists behind, their way proved to be diagonally up the slope of the volcano, and the tramp was kept up for hours beneath the broiling heat of the sun, while it seemed to Jack that every now and then hot sulphurous puffs of wind escaped from the stony ground over which they passed. The trees grew rapidly fewer and less in size, till there were only scattered bushes, and higher still these were dwarfed into wiry grasses and tufts of a heather-like growth, with lichens and dried-up mosses.
“Try and hold up, Mr Jack sir, they must halt soon to eat and drink. My word, if we weren’t prisoners, I’d say what a view we get from up here. See anything of the yacht?”
“No, Ned; she’s inside the reef, and we can’t see that.”
“No, sir, you’re right. ‘Britons never shall be slaves,’ but all the same I feel just as if I was being driven to market. That’s it, they’re taking us somewhere to sell us, I know; wonder how many cocoanuts we shall fetch, or p’r’aps it’ll be shells. Thirsty, sir?”
“I don’t know, Ned, I haven’t thought about it. I suppose I am, and hungry and very tired; but I’ve been thinking about whether we shall ever see the yacht again.”
“Oh yes, sir. Never say die. Life’s all ups and downs. Sir John ain’t forsaking us, you may be sure, and any moment we may see him and a lot of our jolly Jack Tars coming round the corner, and the doctor with ’em, ready to give these black brutes a dose of leaden pills. Ah! and they’ll have to take ’em too, whether they like ’em or no. Don’t you be down.”
“I’m not, Ned. I keep trying to think that it’s all adventure and experience.”
“That’s it, sir. Do to talk about when we get back to old England.”