Marston nodded. He saw trees in front, and in one place, a dark blur, faintly edged by white, that he thought was a bank of mud, but all was vague and somehow daunting. The trees got blacker, although they were not more distinct, the sails flapped and then hung limp. The pilot called out, and when Marston gave an order the anchor plunged and the silence was broken by the roar of running chain. This died away when Columbine swung, and except for the languid rumble of the surf all was quieter than before. The pilot got on board his canoe and vanished in the mist, and a few minutes afterwards Marston went to the cabin. It was very hot, but when malaria lurks in the night mist one does not sleep on deck.
When he awoke in the morning the cabin floor slanted, and going on deck he saw why the pilot had told them to let the boom rest on the port quarter. The tide had ebbed and although its rise and fall was not large, belts of mud and channels of yellow water occupied the bed of the lagoon. All round were dingy mangroves that overlapped and hid the entrance. A little water flowed past the yacht, but it was plain that her bilge rested on the ground. The bottom shelved, but the heavy boom inclined her up the bank. There was nobody about and nothing indicated that anybody ever visited the spot. Marston frowned, because it was hard to persuade himself he was not in Africa.
About noon a canoe arrived with two negroes on board and Marston and Wyndham were paddled to a village some miles up a creek. It was a poor place; small, whitewashed mud houses, a rusty iron store, and a row of squalid huts occupied a clearing in the forest. Wyndhams' agent had a house by the creek and received his visitors in his office. Outside the sand was dazzling, but the office was dark and comparatively cool. A reed curtain covered the window, which had no glass, there was no door, and little puffs of wind blew in. Don Felix was a fat and greasy mulatto, dressed in soiled white duck, with a broad red sash, in which an ornamental Spanish knife was stuck.
He brought out some small glasses and a bottle of scented liquor and they began to talk and smoke. The agent's English was not good and he now and then used French and Castilian words. Marston noted that he talked about a number of unimportant matters before he touched on business, and seemed unwilling to come to the subject.
"I can give you a load, but trade is bad," he said at length, and turned to the window with a gesture that seemed to indicate the forest. "The people up there are lazy and for some time have not brought much produce down."
"It's natural produce, I suppose? Stuff that grows itself," Marston remarked. "There isn't much cultivation in the bush?"
Don Felix shrugged. "Quien sabe? Who knows what they do up yonder? These people they are drôle. Sometimes they bring me cargo. Sometimes they come to beg; there is a fiesta in their village, they make fandango, jamboree. The trader pays for the fiesta and gets back nothing."
"Then why do you pay?"
"It is better," Don Felix replied and looked at the door, as if to see there was nobody about. "They are bête, the Mestizos, but when one is wise one does not make enemies. There is much Obeah in the bush."
"Obeah's something like African Ju-Ju? Magic of a sort?" Marston suggested.