“Well, not quite so bad as that, sir. Say about half-cracked; and that’s about what I’m beginning to think. I say, they are getting all the fun behind there.”
“Look out; here comes another!” cried Rodd, for there was a pair of eyes in front gliding rapidly towards them just above the water, but apparently not satisfied with the appearance of the boat, or perhaps less ravenous, the two prominences softly disappeared before they were close up, and Joe Cross, evidently divining what might happen, suddenly caught Rodd round the waist and forced him down into the bottom of the boat.
“Look out, my lads!” he yelled.
As he spoke the hinder part of the boat began slowly to rise, showing that they were gliding right over a reptile’s back. Then it was turned to starboard, the water coming almost to the edge; but as it glided on it began to sink to the level again, just as it received a heavy shock from below and was driven forward with a jerk just far enough to escape a blow from a serrated tail which rose astern and showered the water over them in so much blinding spray.
“Here, ahoy there!” shouted Joe. “Look alive, and bring up them guns! There’s more sport up here than we want. I wouldn’t care, Mr Rodd, if we had got our oars and my boat-hook. Nay, I don’t know, though. It’s just as well I haven’t, for I should be getting it stuck perhaps, and never see that no more.”
A few minutes after, while the firing was kept up from astern, the two boats came up on either side, and amidst the heartiest of congratulations Rodd cried—
“Ah, uncle, you have overtaken us at last! I am glad you have come!”
“Overtaken you, my boy! Why, we have been miles down the river towards the mouth. We started as soon as the tide was slack enough for us to leave the vessels. We must have passed you in the fog, and we were beginning to despair. But we came upon one of the sailors’ caps hanging in a bough, when, thinking that perhaps we had gone too far, and Captain Chubb feeling sure that you had run ashore somewhere in the darkness, perhaps been carried right into the flooded forest, we came back and—”
He ceased speaking, took a quick aim over the side of the boat, and discharged the contents of his double gun into the head of a reptile which rose three or four yards away.
“The brutes!” he went on. “But there don’t appear to be so many here. We seem to have been coming through quite a shoal.”