“No, no,” said Hannibal, showing his white teeth. “We row Mass’ George boat all away.”
“Look, Mass’ George,” cried Pomp, as there was a scuffle, a splash, and a good-sized alligator startled by our coming hurried into the river. “You like shoot um?”
“No, no. Let’s get right away home first.”
“All the same, sir, we’ll load the guns,” said Morgan. “I don’t think we shall want to use ’em, but there’s a few marks about this boat to show that sometimes it is necessary.”
He pointed laughingly to the holes left where the arrows stuck in the sides and thwarts.
“I broke out an arrow-head this morning,” he said; and he picked it up from where it lay.
Pomp watched us eagerly as we charged all three pieces, and laid them down in the stern, after which I sat thoroughly enjoying the scene, which was all as fresh to me as if I had never been there before. But at the same time, as we went on, I recognised the different spots where the Indians had made their stand to harass us during our memorable escape down the river, notably at the wooded point we passed round just before reaching the mouth of our stream, and leaving the main river behind.
Then, as the space contracted and the banks seemed to draw gradually closer together, we soon began to get into more familiar parts, and at last the higher trees and points and bends were all memorable, known as they were to Pomp and myself in connection with fishing excursions or hunts for squirrel or nest.
The stream here ran swiftly, and swirled round some of the bends, at times well open, at others so close did the forest come that we seemed to be going along between two huge walls of verdure; and I don’t know whether they would have noticed it, but just before we turned into our lesser river, something induced me to begin talking rather rapidly to both Pomp and Hannibal, for we were passing the place where the slaver had lain, and as we came by, it seemed to me that the poor fellows must begin thinking of the horrors of that day when we brought them up in that very boat, one dying, the other as wild as any savage creature of the forest.
“Here we are at last,” I cried, as we came close up to the cut-down trees on the bank which served as posts to our landing-place.