“Shiver my main-brace!” roared he, thumping the bottom of the boat with his wooden leg after they had talked it all over. “Shiver my mainbrace! I'll go the first trip with ye, lads, an' trust the old cutter to luck.”
“See here, captain,” said Jack persuasively “why not trust her to me? It's for only one trip, as you say; and besides, there's not much danger of an attack to-night. You said so yourself.”
To this arrangement the old sailor finally agreed. So Don, Spottie, and Puggles loaded up with the stores and other necessaries for their proposed sojourn on the summit of the hill, and a start was made, the captain leading with musket and lantern.
“Good-bye, Jack!” Don called back, as he struck into the jungle at the captain's heels. “'Fire a gun if you want help.”
“All right, old fellow,” was Jack's careless reply. “Good-bye till I see you again!”
'So, with no other companion than Bosin, he was left alone to guard the cutter.
And now the difficulties of the captain's party began in earnest. The path before them was, it is true, scarce half a mile in length, but so precipitous was the hillside, so overgrown the track, that every furlong seemed a league. The tangled, overhanging jungle growth not only completely shut out the rays of the moon, but by its thickness impeded their progress at every step, as though determined to guard the abode of the witch-tiger from all human intrusion. To make matters worse, they had neglected to provide themselves with an axe.
“Shiver my main-brace!” the captain cried, as his wooden leg stuck fast in a tangled mass of creepers. “These 'ere land trips be a pesky sight worse nor a sea woyage, says you! Blow me! I'd ruther round the Horn in mid-winter than wade through such wegetation as this 'ere in midnight darkness! Howsomedever, the port's afore us, so up we goes, as Jonah says to the whale when he bid the warmint adoo.”
Up they went accordingly, and after much stumbling and tough climbing, reached the summit and the Haunted Pagodas. Finding here a clear space and bright moonlight, they quickly relieved themselves of their loads.
“An' now, lads,” cried the captain, “wear ship an' back to the cutter, says you. Fire my magazine! what's that? I axes.”