"All clear! Come alive! Ready for a shock if she strikes, girls. Haul in, John! That's the ticket!"
In between the trees, they rushed on a white foam-crest, swept past, and went darting across the quiet surface of a lagoon, the sails flapping. A hundred yards in width it was, the mangrove wall on one side, and on the other a strip of white sand with jungle greenery making another wall to shut off the sky. The boat glided gently across and drifted until her nose touched the sand. With a breath of relief, Barnes dropped his oar.
Then the heat smote them, blazing, torrential, insufferable. There in the quiet lagoon, cut off from wind and sea, the sun beat down unchecked. Nora Sayers, coming to her feet, glanced at the watch on her wrist and uttered a cry of surprise.
"Good gracious! Do you know that it's nearly noon? No wonder it's hot——"
"Sit down!" ordered Barnes. "Pull her up, lads."
Leaping into the water, the quartermasters pulled the nose of the whaleboat to the sand and helped the two women and the children out.
"All ashore!" sang out Barnes. "Li Fu, you and John cut a new mast and sprit. Bamboo, if you can find it; if not, whatever you can get. Miss Sayers, keep your eye on the kids, will you? Miss—er—Ellen, will you take this stuff as I hand it out? We'll use the spare canvas for table-cloth, and have a bang-up feed to celebrate. You girls are getting your money's worth this cruise! How do you like Borneo?"
Nora Sayers had no time to answer, for the three brown children had promptly stripped and were plunging through the water or catching sand-fleas, and she was in laughing pursuit. Ellen Maggs smiled as she took the provisions that Barnes handed out.
"I—why, I like it!" she said, her eyes big with wonder at the things around, and sparkling with eagerness. "I'm frightened, and happy, and—don't want to go back! Are there any savages around?"
"Probably a few head-hunters, but they won't worry us. Here's a tin of sardines."