But before it was settled, darkness fell, and another dismal night was passed.
The next day broke bright and fine, and encouraged thereby, every man was keenly on the alert to try and sight one of the Spaniard’s halting-places; but it was long before such an opening was found, and then when it was hailed with delight as their resting-place at the end of that day’s work, it was forced upon them that they had never been there before.
Fortunately, though their stores were diminished in quantity, fish were plentiful, and every now and then a bird fell to Rodd’s or the doctor’s gun, for it was felt to be a necessity, as more and more all realised that they were involved in a perfect labyrinth or network of watery ways, and that their stores should be supplemented. For opening after opening in the great walls of verdure kept presenting itself, nearly always involving the party in a dispute as to whether they had been there before, till their mental confusion became greater, their ideas more sadly confused, and the tract of low-lying water-netted country, far from seeming the paradise through which they had glided on their way up, now seemed the dwelling-place of despair.
“Isn’t there one of you who can guide us aright?” cried the doctor despairingly. “Is it possible that what seemed so easy to that treacherous Spanish wretch should prove such a horrible problem to us all?”
For a time no one spoke, the men hanging their heads, and by way of showing their earnestness tugging harder at their oars. But at the next appeal Joe Cross was egged on to make some answer.
“You see, sir,” he said, “there isn’t anything we wouldn’t do for you. The lads here are sharp enough, but they wants a handle to work them. We are only sailors, used to having an officer over us, and without him we aren’t much account.”
“Oh,” groaned the doctor to Rodd, “and I cannot direct them! Rodd, boy, my brain feels as if it were giving way.”
“Don’t be down-hearted, sir. Don’t chuck up your pluck, young gentlemen,” continued the poor fellow earnestly. “We must get out at last. It all seemed so easy as we come up; but without that Spanish chap, and now that it seems to be all turned upside down like, as we are coming back’ards, it’s like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. You see, me and my messmates have turned it all over in our heads, and it always comes to this, that that storm either made us take a wrong turning, or else that that Spaniard took us into a tangle of watercourses out of which no one but him and them niggers could find the way.”
“Yes, yes,” said the doctor; “we were thoroughly trapped into what has proved to be a horrible maze.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” cried Joe. “And amazing it is; but we are not going to give up, sir. Wish we may all die if we do; for you see, it must all come right at last. We have a lot of provisions, plenty of powder and shot; we can’t fail for fresh water, which is a great thing for sailors; there’s wood enough to make fires for five hundred years; and as for good fish to eat, why, you could almost catch them with your hands.”