“Why, we must have come inshore for some distance last night,” cried Rodd, in wonder.
“Ay, my lad. Banks flooded. High tide perhaps,” said Joe bluffly. “Well, the sooner we gets down into this mud and stretches our legs the better; and if they don’t come down in the boats, how we are going to get back is more than I know.”
“Look! Look yonder!” cried Rodd, as, sweeping the park-like stretch around him, he suddenly caught sight of an object that filled his breast with joy.
“Three cheers, my lads,” shouted Joe, waving his hand, “and— Oh, hold hard! Avast there! Gig’s safe to have a hole through her bottom.”
For there, about a hundred yards away, between the trees, lay something gleaming amongst the mud.
He could only see a portion, but that was enough, and one by one, stiff and cold, the unfortunate party lowered themselves down from their perches to drop into a thin surface of soft mud, the swift rush of the tide preventing it from accumulating to any depth.
Their fortune was better than they anticipated, for on reaching the boat’s side it was to find that, though bottom upward, she had escaped any serious injury, the yielding boughs into which she had been swept having checked the force of the concussion and left her to glide from tangle of boughs to tangle, until she had been wedged into a huge fork and had from there slowly settled down.
But there was neither oar nor boat-hook, and the line fastened to her foremost thwart had been snapped in two.
“All her tackle gone,” said Joe grimly. “Well, we must try and find and hack off some big bamboo canes with our jack-knives, and then try if we can’t punt her up against the tide, which ought to be pretty slack by now—that is, if they don’t come to find us.”
“But look here, Joe,” cried Rodd, as he stood shading his eyes from the horizontal sunbeams; “there’s the river, and the mist’s rolling along with the tide. Here, I’m puzzled. Which way did we come?”