The storm was over at last, and one morning, as the brig was running due west under a full press of sail, it suddenly struck Brace that the water over the side was not so clear as it had been an hour before when he was leaning over the bulwark gazing down into the crystalline depths, trying to make out fish, and wondering how it was that, though there must be millions upon millions in the ocean through which they were sailing, he could not see one.
“We must be getting into water that has been churned up by the storm,” thought Brace; but just then the second mate came up and he referred to him.
“Water not so clear?” he said. “No wonder; we’re right off the mouths of the Amazon now.”
“So far south?”
“Yes, and running right in. Before long the water, instead of being like this—a bit thick—will be quite muddy, and this time to-morrow we shall be bidding good-bye to the sea, I suppose, for some time to come.”
Lynton’s words were quite right, for the next day, after a most satisfactory run, Brace stood gazing over the bows of the brig at the thick muddy water that was churned up, and finding it hard to believe that he was sailing up the mouth of a river; for, look which way he would, nothing was to be seen but water, while when he tried his glass it was with no better success.
But at last the land was to be made out on the starboard bow, or rather what was said to be land, a long, low, hazy something on the distant horizon.
A couple of days later there was land plain enough on both sides of the brig, and they commenced a long, dismal progress up stream, of a monotonous kind that was wearisome in the extreme.
As time went on, though, there was a change, and that was followed by plenty of variety in the shape of huge trees, with all their branches and leaves tolerably fresh, floating seaward, just as they had fallen from the bank after the mighty stream had undermined them. In one case there were land birds flitting about the few boughs that appeared above the water, but generally they were gulls snatching at the small fish attracted by the floating object.
Once there was a great matted-together patch of earth fully thirty yards long and half as wide, a veritable island with bushes still in their places, floating steadily seaward, and helping to explain the muddiness of the water and the shallowness of the ocean far out and to right and left of where the great river debouched.