Mallet laughed good-naturedly. “I didn't mind it, sir, though 'tis a powerful hot day, and the natives are all lying asleep in their huts; they can't understand why us works as we do in the sun. Lord, sir! How I should like to see old Kingsdown and Walmer Castle to-day, all a-white with snow. I was born at Deal.”
Mary Cornell brought the old seaman a young coconut to drink, and her husband added a little rum; Mallet tossed it off and then sat down.
“Well, sir, the ship is all right, and those chaps aboard seem content enough. But I'm afeared that the worms are a-getting into her although she is moored right abreast of the river. So I took it on me to tell Totten and Harris to stay aboard whilst I came back to ask you if it wouldn't be best for us to bring her right in to the fresh water, and moor her here, right abreast o' the house. That'll kill any worms as has got into her timbers. And we can tow her in the day after to-morrow, when there will be a big tide.”
“You did quite right, Mallet. Very likely the worms have got into her timbers in spite of her being abreast of the river's mouth. I should have thought of this before.”
“Ah, Jack,” said his wife, with a smile, “we have thought too much of our gold-getting and too little of the poor old Ceres.”
“Well, I shall think more of her now, Mary. And as the rains will be on us in a few days—so the natives say—and we can do no more work for three months, I think it will be as well for us to sail the Ceres over to that chain of lagoon islands about thirty miles from here. I fear to remain here during the wet season, on account of the fever.”
After further discussion it was decided that Jack and Mallet, with some natives, should make an early start in the morning for their mining camp, six miles away, at the foot of the range, and do a long, last day's work, returning to the house on the following day. Meanwhile a message was to be sent to Harris and Totten to bring the vessel into the creek as soon as the tide served, which would be in forty-eight hours. Then, whilst she lay for a week in the fresh water, so as to kill the suspected teredo navalis worms, which Mallet feared had attacked her, she was to be made ready for the short voyage of thirty miles over to a cluster of islands enclosing a spacious lagoon, where Corwell intended to beach her till the rainy season was over, when he would return to work a very promising stream in another locality. Already he and his men, aided by the natives, had, in the four months that had passed since they arrived, won nearly five hundred ounces of gold, crude as were their appliances.
“Jack,” said his wife, “I think that, as you will be away all day and night, to-morrow I shall go on board and see what I can do. I'll make the men turn to and give the cabin a thorough overhauling. Marawa, the chiefs wife, has given me a lot of sleeping-mats, and I shall throw those old horrible flock mattresses overboard, and we shall have nice clean mats instead to lie on.”
At daylight Mallet aroused the natives who were to accompany him and the captain, and then told off two of them to make the boat ready for Mrs. Corwell. Then he returned to the house and called out—