The Penang Pirate / and, The Lost Pinnace

by John C. Hutcheson

“It was fortunate for us we had the sun to guide us through all this forest waste, as otherwise we could not possibly have steered in any constant direction, but would probably have gone round in a circle like a horse in a mill. As it was, however, even amidst the depth of brushwood and jungle by the side of the salt-water lagoon where we were camping for the time, we could easily distinguish the western point of the compass from the sun circling almost directly towards that quarter after it had passed the meridian, for we were only some fifteen degrees south of the equator; and in the morning, likewise, we had no difficulty in telling when we faced east.

“Under these circumstances, therefore, I advised all hands to get up when they felt a little less tired and trudge on steadily due south, where our only hope of safety lay, as long as the light through the trees enabled us to see where we were going. Once the light became uncertain, it would be better to stop for the night than to wander about and fatigue ourselves unnecessarily, only perhaps to find out when the sun rose again at dawn that we had been merely retracing our previous day’s steps to no good.

“It was a hard job to make the poor chaps buckle to their tramp again, and it was as much as Magellan and I could do to get them to start. One of them, Denis Brown, he was a faint-hearted man even on board ship, entreated us to let him lie down there and die where he was; but of course we would not leave him behind, and he had to come on with us whether he liked it or not, Magellan and I forcing him on his legs and dragging him on.

“Our first task was to get round the lagoon, which was so overgrown with reeds and suchlike rank vegetation as grows in swamps that we couldn’t tell where it began or ended; but as the sea must lay towards the west, I came to the conclusion that if we skirted the bank in the opposite direction we would soon come to the neck of the water and be able to wade across it. This we did, but it was arduous walking—through mud and slime, with snakes darting out every now and then upon us, and huge crocodiles crawling out of our way, just as we almost set foot on them, which frightened some of the timid ones pretty much, I can tell you!

“At last we managed to get round the lagoon; and then, steering steadily again to the south, this bit of easting having taken us a good deal out of our straight course southwards, we had a second mountain to climb up through tangled brushwood and jungle. This seemed harder work a good deal than the first one, for we were almost tired out when we started on the journey, while our feet were so swollen and blistered with all the walking we had already done, besides being torn to pieces with the stones and jagged bits of tree roots we had trodden on, that we could hardly crawl up, although we grasped hold of the branches of the shrubs and brushwood to drag ourselves up by. When we arrived at the top of this chain of hills—for it was first up and then down most of the way—the sun was just setting; so, down we squatted in the first open place we reached, resting for the night and leaving the descent into the valley for the next morning. Indeed, we were so weary and worn out that if we had known for a certainty that water was within reach of us at the bottom of the hill, although we were so thirsty that we couldn’t hardly speak to one another, I don’t believe a man of us would have stirred after once lying down to get a drink—we really couldn’t have stirred a step!

“The sun had been up a good time before we rose from the ground, on this, the third day of our being in the bush, and when we got up it was as much as we could do to stand in an erect position at all, our energies being so exhausted that hardly a man had a scrap of strength left to drag himself up. Of all the miserable scarecrows you ever saw in your life, we must have then looked the worst—with our bare pelts burnt and blistered, our tangled hair and beards, our woebegone faces, out of which our eyes were almost starting from their sockets, and our bleeding feet and limbs, the latter all scratched, and with pieces of flesh torn out of them by the briars and thorns through which we had to scramble in our climb up the mountain!

“‘We look just fit for Madame Tussaud’s chamber of horrors,’ said Magellan, contemplating himself ruefully, and then looking at the rest of us, who were all in the same sorry plight—like a parcel of naked white savages.

“‘Aye,’ said I, ‘and I wouldn’t mind being there in London now! Howsomdever, old ship’—I added on to what I was saying, seeing that the fellows laughed and cheered up a bit at Magellan’s comical way—‘if we ever hopes to get there we must trudge on now. Our course is all downhill, thank goodness, and perhaps we’ll meet with a river at last—as soon as we get down to the gully.’

“‘That’s your sort,’ shouted out Magellan heartily; ‘rouse up, my hearties, and let us push on. There’s no good our remaining here, and the sooner we start, why, the sooner we’ll get to Majunga. Yo, heave ho! Up anchor, men, and make sail! Heave ahead with a will and follow me!’

“With that, we got under way again, with Magellan leading, as he was stronger than me now, and the first man of course made the path easier for those coming after him—which was the reason I went in advance as long as I was able. In proportion as it had been harder to climb, so was this mountain steeper and more dangerous to descend than the first one we had surmounted, for it sloped down so suddenly in some places that it seemed as if we were sliding down the pointed roof of a house; while we had to look out narrowly for several ugly chasms or crevices in the ground on which we popped every now and then most unexpectedly. Denis Brown, the most unlucky of the party, as generally happens to timid nervous people, nearly got his neck broken in one of these gullies soon after we started, and it was only by the exertions of all our party that we saved his life.