They still had to learn the circumstances in which Fritz had discovered the Burning Rock.
When the boat left Pearl Bay, Fritz, who was in front of it in his canoe, passed a note to his father acquainting him with his intention to go to find the young English girl. So after passing the archway, instead of following the coast to the east, he went off in the opposite direction.
The shore was sown with reefs and fringed by enormous rocks. Beyond were masses of trees as fine as those at Wood Grange and Eberfurt. Numerous water-courses found their outlet in little bays. This north-west coast was unlike that between Deliverance Bay and Nautilus Bay.
Fritz was compelled by the heat, which was very great the first day, to go ashore in order to find a little shade. He had to be rather cautious, for the hippopotami which lived at the mouth of the streams could easily have reduced the canoe to fragments.
Arriving at the outskirts of a dense wood, Fritz drew his light boat to the foot of a tree. Then, tired out he sank to sleep.
Next morning the voyage was continued until midday. When he put in to shore on this occasion Fritz was obliged to repulse the attack of a tiger which he wounded in the flank while his eagle tried to tear out the eyes of the brute. Two pistol shots stretched it dead at his feet.
But, to Fritz's bitter regret, the eagle, disembowelled by a blow from the tiger's claw, had ceased to breathe. Poor Blitz was buried in the sand, and his master resumed his voyage, grieved by the loss of his faithful hunting companion.
The second day had been spent following the winding coastline. No smoke out at sea indicated the presence of the Burning Rock. Now, as the sea was calm, Fritz determined to go farther out, in order to see if any smoke was visible above the south-western horizon. Accordingly he drove his canoe in that direction. His sail bellied out in the brisk breeze off the land. After sailing for a couple of hours he was preparing to put about when he thought he could perceive a faint smoke.
At once Fritz forgot everything, the uneasiness his prolonged absence would cause at Rock Castle, his own fatigue, and the risks he would run in venturing out so far to sea. Driven by paddle as well as the wind, the canoe flew over the sea.
An hour later Fritz found himself within half-a-dozen cable-lengths of an island topped by a volcano, from which smoke and flame were escaping.