"Indeed, and I shall, Dolly, and come back the same way. Don't you fear for me, my lad," said I; "I've been in a fog before in my life, and out of it, too, though I never loved them overmuch. If there's danger down below, one man has eyes enough to see it. It would be a mortal waste and pity that four should pay what one can give. But I won't forget that you are hungry, and if there's roast duck about, Peter Bligh shall have a wing, I promise him."
Well, they all sat up at this; and Peter Bligh, very solemnly crossing his fingers after the Italian fashion, swore, as seamen will, that we'd all go together, good luck or bad, the devil or the deep sea. Seth Barker was no less determined upon it; and as for Dolly Venn, I believe he'd have cried like a child if he'd been left behind. In the end I gave way to them, and it was agreed that we should all set out together, for better or worse, when the right time came.
"Your way, lads, not mine," said I; and pleased, too, at their affection. "As you wish it, so shall it be; and that being agreed upon I'll trouble Peter Bligh for his tobacco, for mine's low. We'll dine this night, fog or no fog. 'Twould want to be something sulphurous, I'm thinking, to put Peter off his grub. Aye, Peter, isn't that so? What would you say now to an Irish stew with a bit of bacon in it, and a glass of whisky to wash it down? Would fogs turn you back?"
"No, nor Saint Patrick himself, with a shillelagh in his hand. I'm mortal empty, captain; and no man's more willing to leave this same bird's nest though he had all the sulphur out of Vesuvius on his diagram! We'll go down at sunset, by your leave, and God send us safely back again!"
The others echoed my "Amen," and for an hour or more we all sat dozing in the heat of the angry day. Once, I think towards seven bells of the watch, Dolly Venn pointed out the funnels of a steamer on the northern horizon; but the loom of the smoke was soon lost, and from that time until six o'clock of the afternoon I do not think twenty words were to be heard on the rock. We were just waiting, waiting, like weary men who have a big work to do and are anxious to do it; and no sooner had the sun gone down and a fresh breeze of night begun to blow, than we jumped to our feet and told each other that the time had come.
"Do you, Peter, take the ladder and let Seth Barker steady the end of it," said I. "The road's tricky enough, and precious little dinner you'll get at the bottom of a thousand-foot chasm! If there's men on the island, we shall know that soon enough. They cannot do more than murder us, and murder has merits when starvation's set against it. Come on, my lads," said I, "and keep a weather-eye open."
This I said, and willingly they heard me; no gladder party ever went down a hillside than we four, whom hunger drove on and thirst made brave. Dangerous places, which we should have crossed with wary feet at any other time, now found us reckless and hasty.
We bridged the chasms with the ladder, and slid down it as though it had been a rope. The bird's nest, where five days ago we'd first found shelter from the islanders, detained us now no longer than would suffice for thirsty men to bathe their faces and their hands in the brook which gushed out from the hillside, and to drink a draught which they remembered to their dying day. Aye, refreshing it was, more than words can tell, and such strength it gave us that, if there had been a hundred men on the mountain path; I do believe our steps would still have been set for the bungalow. For we were about to learn the truth. Curiosity is a good wind, even when you're hungry.
Now, there was a place on the headland, three hundred feet above the valley, perhaps, whereat the hill path turned and, for the first time, the island was plainly to be seen. Here at this place we stopped all together and began to spy out the woods through which we had raced for our lives six days ago. The sun had but just set then, and, short as the twilight is in these parts, there was enough of it for us to make a good observation and to be sure of many things. What I think struck us all at the first was the absence of any fog such as we had heard about both from the Frenchman and Ruth Bellenden's diary. A bluish vapour, it is true, appeared to steam up from the woods and to loom in hazy clouds above the lower marshland. But of fog in the proper sense there was not a trace; and although I began to find the air a little heavy to breathe, and a curious stupidness, for which I could not altogether account, troubled my head, nevertheless I made sure that the story of sleep-time was, in the main, a piece of nonsense and that we should soon prove it to be so. Nor were the others behind me in this.
"It is no fog I see which would slow me down a knot!" said Peter Bligh, when the island came into view; "to think that a man should go without his dinner for yon peat smoke! Surely, captain, they are simple in these parts and easy at the bogeys. 'Twill be roast duck, after all— and, may-be, the sage thrown in!"