“Looked so to you, sir, but all along here the shore’s full of inlets, as you call them; but they are deep water and go winding in and out, and perhaps open out into big sheets of water like lagoons, as they call them. But I am of opinion that if we don’t turn into one to-night we shall do so some time to-morrow, and perhaps find just the sort of spot we want. It we don’t we will go a bit farther south.”
“But take us up beyond all this horrible mangrove swamp,” said Rodd.
“You leave that to me, sir,” said the skipper. “We have got a good bit of work to do with that brig, and I want to bring my lads out again, and the Count’s too, well and hearty, not half of them eaten up with fever and t’other half sucked into dry skins by the mosquitoes. No, we shall have to sail right up to where it gets to be a forest and park-like country.”
“There’ll be no towns?” said Rodd.
“No, sir, but we might come across a blacks’ village, and if we do we can anchor somewhere on the other shore.”
Another afternoon had come before the mangrove forest seemed to turn inland and run right up the country, just as if they had come to the end of that portion of the land; but miles away the skipper pointed out that the forest began again and also swept inland, while by using the glass the lads were able to trace the configuration of the coast, and saw that the two lines of coast north and south came together away east.
“There,” said the skipper, “what do you say to this for the mouth of a big river?”
“River?” said the doctor, coming up.
“Yes, sir—or estuary, which you like. This is the sort of one that will suit us, though as far as I can make out it is not down in my chart. So all the more likely to suit our book.”
“But do you think it’s a river, and not a bend of the coast?” asked the doctor.