This done to the satisfaction of the owner, whom Peter had been working hard to help, the lad uttered an apologetic cough.
“Look here, Pete,” said Archie impatiently; “if you are going to say that we had better remain in hiding on account of the moonlight and the glare of that fire, you had better be silent, for we must trust to these people to do what they think best.”
“I warn’t a-going to say nothing of the sort, Mister Archie, sir,” protested the lad.
“Then what were you going to say? I know that that cough or grunt of yours means that you are going to object to something.”
“No, sir; it’s not a object to anything unless you say I can’t have it. I was only going to ask if Miss Minnie didn’t say something about having fruit aboard this ’ere craft.”
“Yes, yes!” cried Minnie excitedly.
“Well, miss,” said Peter, with a sigh of relief, “if you won’t think it rude of me, I should just like to say that Mister Archie here ain’t had a mossel of nothing to eat since the day before yesterday, and PP ain’t much better.”
“Oh Dula!” exclaimed Minnie; and she uttered a few words in the Malay tongue that sent the woman rustling past the cut boughs beneath the attap awning, to return directly and gladden the eyes of Peter with a basket containing a heap of bananas and a couple of native-made cakes.
“Ah!” sighed Peter. “Don’t they look lovely in the moonlight! Tlat!” he added, with a hearty smack of his lips.—“No, thank you, sir. No water, please,” he continued, after a busy interval. “I never feel sure what you might be swallowing when you have a dip out of the river. It’s all very well when the sun shines hot, but when it’s the moon it don’t make you thirsty—least it don’t me.”
It must have been a couple of hours later, during which the occupants of the boat had been watching the rising and falling of the fire as they swung slowly to and fro at the end of the rope, when Minnie, who had been speaking in a whisper to the boatman and his wife, turned to her companions and said: