"The Cumbria should lie about north from here up the biggest creek," said Austin. "If we borrowed the canoe yonder you could find your way to her?"
"I'd try that, or anything, so long as it was to get out of this."
He glanced towards the hut again, and Austin, who could not quite explain it, then or afterwards, became sensible that if he waited much longer he would say or do something that would not be seemly in one who was there as leader. He felt that had he been alone he would probably have turned and run.
"Well," he said, as quietly as he could contrive, "we will run the canoe down. I believe some of the things they get are infectious now and then."
He had no need to repeat the order. The Canarios jumped at the word, and in another few minutes they had launched the canoe and were paddling her out of the creek clumsily, as men unaccustomed to the oar might do. It opened into a wider one, through which the heave of the sea pulsed languidly, until they crawled round a point and the streamy mangroves closed in on them. Then suddenly the thick, hot darkness fell.
They moored the canoe to a slimy stem, and lay down in her, packed like herrings; but in spite of the mosquitoes Austin slept a little of the night. He was glad when all the swamps steamed again as the dawn broke suddenly upon them; and when they had eaten they took up the paddles. The mists thinned and melted, the sun that sucked the damp from their dew-soaked clothing scorched their skin, and the glare from the yellow water became intolerable. Still, it was evident that it would not be advisable to waste any time, and through the long hot hours the canoe crept on.
Now she slid into steamy shadow among the mangrove islets, skirting belts of mire, and now crept, a slender strip of hull, packed with wearied and perspiring humanity, across broad reaches of flaming water that moved on inland under her, streaked with smears of yellow foam. It was evident to Austin that the flood tide ran longer than usual there, as it sometimes does about an island, or the Guinea stream had backed it up along the shore. The stream, however, did not only set up the creek, but slid through the forest, where the trees rose on arched roots above the water; and here and there they had to paddle hard to avoid being drawn into branch-roofed tunnels that smelt like open sewers. The refuse of leagues of forest seemed to lie rotting there.
By afternoon Austin's hands were bleeding, and one of his knees was raw where he pressed it as a point of resistance to paddle from on the craft's bottom; but he took his place when his turn came, though his eyes were dazzled, and the headache that had crept upon him was growing insufferable. He was now distinctly anxious as to when they would reach the Cumbria, for, though Bill said she lay up a big muddy creek north of the island, he appeared by no means sure that was the one, and Austin felt he could not logically blame him. Creeks, it was evident, were bewilderingly plentiful in that country, and there were no distinctive features in the scenery. Dingy, white-stemmed mangroves, fermenting mire, and yellow water, were all the same, and as they crept on past bend and island there was no sign of change.
The shadows lay black upon the water when they stopped again, all of them horribly cramped, and aching in every limb; but when they had sat portentiously silent, with the craft moored to a mangrove root, for half an hour or so, Bill stood up in the bow.
"Did you hear anything, Mr. Austin?" he asked.