“Tidy, sir,” said Billy Widgeon. “But if it’s all the same to you, we’d rather keep on as long as we can.”
“Why, Billy?” asked Mark.
“Well, sir, since you put it like that,” said the little sailor, smiling sheepishly, “it is that.”
“Is what, Billy?”
“Why, what you mean, sir. You meant wittles. That’s what you was a-thinking about. You see if we goes ashore we shall have to pick they fowls, and make a fire, and wait till they’re cooked afore we can eat ’em, and to men as hungry as we, sir, that’s a deal wuss than rowing a few miles; eh, mate?”
This was to the man at the oar forward. The response was an affirmatory grunt.
“There, Gregory,” said the captain, “what do you say now?”
“Keep on,” replied Gregory, shortly. “Widgeon is right.”
The island never seemed more beautiful to them than now as the sun went down lower and lower till, like a great fiery globe, it nearly touched the sea: for rock, jungle, and the central mountainous clump, with the conical volcano dominating all, was seen through a glorious golden haze, while the sea was first purple and gold, and then orange, changing slowly into crimson.
The sun disappeared just as they rounded the point for which they had been making; but still there was no sign of the camp. Nothing but the purple lagoon stretching on and on, with the creamy line of surf on one side, the fringe of cocoa-nut trees right down to the sand on the other.