Tom Long rather overslept himself, but it was pretty early when he started from his quarters, to encounter Captain Smithers soon after, looking anxious and annoyed. He nodded shortly, and the young ensign went on through what was quite a wilderness of beauty, to meet, next, Rachel Linton and Mary Sinclair, who had been flower-gathering, and who stopped for a few minutes’ conversation with him, the former nearly spoiling the expedition by turning the foolish youth’s thoughts in quite a contrary direction from collecting or shooting.
But Rachel Linton quietly wished him success, and Tom went off telling himself that it would look foolish if he did not go.
He had not far to go to the landing-place now; but in the little space close by the resident’s garden he encountered Private Gray, who saluted him, and sent Tom on thinking that he wished he was as old, and good-looking, and as manly, as the young soldier he had just passed. And then he felt very miserable and dejected, and wished he was anything but what he was, until he saw Bob Roberts, sitting in the “Startler’s” dinghy by the landing-place, and forgot all about everything but the shooting excursion.
“Come along! You are a chap,” shouted Bob. “I’ve been waiting over half an hour.”
“Met the ladies,” said Tom, “and was obliged to speak.”
“Oh, you met the ladies, did you?” said Bob, looking at him suspiciously. “Well, never mind; jump aboard. Got plenty of cartridges?”
“Yes, heaps; and some food too.”
“So have I,” cried Bob. “Now, then, pull away, Dick. Set us ashore under those trees. Hooray, Tom; look! There’s young Bang-gong there, waiting with a couple of niggers.”
Dick pulled steadily at the sculls, and the little dinghy breasted the water like a duck, soon crossing the intervening space, when the two lads landed with their ammunition and stores, shook hands with the handsome dark young chief who confronted them, and at once started off for the jungle, while Dick stood refilling his right cheek with tobacco, before rowing the dinghy back to the steamer.
“Ah!” he said, as he once more took the sculls, “they never asked me to go, too. Now you see if by the time they get back to-night they hain’t been in about as pretty a bit o’ mischief as was ever hatched.”