“Now, men, give way again,” said the captain.
The men obeyed rather unwillingly, and Jack, who was being left, ran along by the edge of the water shrieking and chattering to be taken with them, Bruff answering with a burst of barks.
“He’ll soon go back,” said Gregory.
Billy Widgeon looked appealingly at Mark.
“Let’s have him with us, father; he’ll be quiet enough.”
“But I want to get on, my lad.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Billy Widgeon respectfully; “me and my mate here’s willing, and he won’t weigh heavy in the boat.”
“Run in and take him,” said the captain shortly; when one man backed, the other pulled, the bows of the gig were run in to the sand; and Jack leaped on board, chattering in duet with the dog’s excited fit of barking; after which, as they continued their way, Bruff seemed disposed for a gambol; but Jack was decidedly stand-offish, from the fact that he was comfortably dry, while the dog was most unpleasantly wet.
They soon settled down, however, and the journey continued, with the shore presenting a succession of lovely pictures which could be enjoyed from the boat far more than while trudging over the sand. Groves of cocoa-nut trees, and beyond them the dense green of the jungle, with, as they progressed, piled-up rocks, black, dark-brown, and glorious with parasitical and creeping growths.
Then every here and there, through some opening where the trees were a little lower, glimpses of the conical mountain appeared, always with the film of vapour hanging about its point, and inviting an ascent to see what wonders it had to show.