“Haven’t I had one, Mr Mark, sir! No, I haven’t; and how people of eddication can go and eat such things as them is more’n I can make out.”
“You try one,” said Mark. “They’re lovely.”
“Too lovely for me, Mr Mark, sir. I’m going to have a chew of tobacco!”
Mark was so highly pleased with his experiment that he turned to Small, who was seated staring straight before him and listening.
“Try one of these, Mr Small,” he said.
Small took the fruit, smelt it, and then jerked it away.
“Don’t you try to play larks on them as is older than yourself, young gentleman,” he said so sourly that Mark walked away discomfited, and the boatswain went on listening till the sound he had heard increased in violence, and he found that everyone was on the qui vive.
“It comes from over the other side of that rocky patch of hill,” said the major, pointing. “It’s a waterfall, and we did not hear it before on account of the wind.”
But if it was a waterfall, and that it sounded to be, it ceased flowing as rapidly and suddenly as it had begun, for once more all was still in that direction, and they sat resting and gazing with mingled feelings of awe and delight at the glorious landscape of black and brown rock and wondrous ferny growth rising before them from beyond a little valley at their feet right up to the summit of the mountain, about whose top the little cloud of smoke or vapour still hung.
It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene of beauty that no one cared to leave, but the captain soon gave the word, for he was desirous of finding some sign of the strange creature that had caused so much alarm.