"True, a little tiny one, like the horn of a cow. Maybe she will give light enough to guide us to a creek. We must e'en wait for her rising."
They had no means of telling the time, and the maroons grew so restless that, while it was still dark, Turnpenny ordered them to paddle cautiously along the shore.
"'Tis a creek I be looking for," he said to Dennis, "where we can run the canow with a fair chance of hiding it when day breaks."
"How far are we from the fort?"
"I cannot tell. I fear me I have overshot the mark with being over cautious."
"That is impossible, Amos. At least it is an error on safety's side.—Hist! what was that?"
His ears had caught a slight splash at no great distance shorewards.
"Nowt to make 'ee uneasy, sir," replied Turnpenny. "'Twas without doubt a cayman slipping off into deep water; and by the token, 'tis a guide for us, for the reptile haunts the banks of rivers, and sure the very creek we be looking for will be somewheres anigh here."
The men drove the canoe a little nearer in shore, and in a few minutes Turnpenny, who was in the bows peering intently ahead, whispered that he did indeed see the opening of a creek. Soon the canoe entered a fairly wide water-way, much obstructed with reeds, and darkened by the dense and high vegetation on either bank. Now and again, through a gap in the foliage, the late rising moon shed a wan mysterious light upon their course. As the canoe moved slowly and stealthily up the creek, Dennis was conscious of a strange home-sickness. How many times had he rowed by night on little tree-shaded creeks and river-mouths in far-off Devon! The deep shadows, the narrow paths of ghostly light, the silence, rendered only the more intense by the incessant croaking of frogs, lent a charm to the adventure that almost eclipsed its peril.
The creek made several curves within a short distance, and Turnpenny, speaking in a whisper, said that they had now come far enough to escape notice from the sea.