Scouts and armed runners were now speedily got together, and Roland gave them orders. They were to search the bush and forest, making a long detour or outflanking movement, then closing round a centre, as if in battue, to allow not a tree to go unexamined.
This was all that could be done.
So our heroes retraced their steps towards the river bank, where, lo! they beheld a whole fleet of strange canoes, big and small, being rowed swiftly towards them.
In the bows of the biggest--a twelve-tonner--stood Burly Bill himself.
He was blacker with the sun than ever, and wildly waving the broadest kind of Panama hat ever seen on the Madeira. But in his left hand he clutched his meerschaum, and such clouds was he blowing that one might have mistaken the great canoe for a steam-launch.
He jumped on shore as soon as the prow touched the bank--the water here being deep.
Black though Burly Bill was, his smile was so pleasant, and his face so good-natured, that everybody who looked at him felt at once on excellent terms with himself and with all created things.
"I suppose I ought to apologize, Mr. Roland, for the delay--I--"
"And I suppose," interrupted Roland, "you ought to do nothing of the kind. Dinner is all ready, Bill; come and eat first. Put guards in your boats, and march along. Your boys will be fed immediately."
It was a splendid dinner.