“But I thought—we thought that—”
Rob ceased speaking, and Giovanni, who looked brown, strong, and well, finished his companion’s sentence after turning to where the two famine-pinched feeble men lay listening for an explanation of the events of the past.
“You thought I had been drowned, and that the men had carried off the boat while you were all looking for me?”
Rob’s eyes said, “Yes,” as plainly as eyes could speak. “Of course you would,” said Joe, laughing merrily. “You couldn’t help thinking so; but I wasn’t drowned, and the men didn’t steal the boat. What say, Shaddy?”
For there was a husky whisper from where the old sailor lay—a ghost of his former self.
“Say?” whispered the guide sourly,—“that we can see all that.”
“Tell us how it was,” said Rob, holding out his hand, which Joe grasped and held, but he did not speak for a few minutes on account of a choking sensation in his breast as the sun glanced in through the ends of the awning, after streaming down like a silver shower through the leaves of the huge tree beneath which the boat was moored, while the swift river, once more back within its bounds, rippled and sang, and played against the sides.
“The men told me,” said Joe at last, with a slight Italian accent in the words, now that he was moved by his emotion—“they told me all about what horror and agony you showed as you all went off to rescue me, while there I was perched up in the branches of the great tree, expecting every moment that it would be rolled over by the river, unless I could creep up to the next bough and the next, all wet and muddy as they were, and I knew that I could not keep on long at that. But all at once, to my horror, we began to glide down—oh, so swiftly, but even then I felt hopeful, for the tree did not turn, and I was far above the water as we went on swifter and swifter, till all at once I caught sight of the boat, moored some distance onward, with the four men in it sitting with their backs to me. I made up my mind to leap into the water and swim to them, but the next minute I knew that it would be impossible, and that the branches would stop me, entangle me, and that I should be drowned. Then the tree began to go faster and drift out toward the middle, but it was caught by an eddy and swept in again toward the shore, so that I felt I should be carried near to the boat, and I shouted to them then to throw me a rope.”
“No good to try and throw a rope,” growled Shaddy faintly.
“Go on, my lad,” whispered Brazier, for Joe had stopped.