Chapter Fifty Five.
Only a Dead-Wood.
Despite the coarse netting of the hammocks on which they were constrained to pass the night, our adventurers slept better than was their wont, from a certain feeling of security,—a confidence that God had not forgotten them. He who could give them food in the forest could also guide them out of the labyrinth into which their own negligence had led them.
A prayer to Him preceded their breakfast on the cream of the cow-tree, and with another they launched themselves upon their strings of shells, with renewed confidence, and proceeded along the curving selvage of the trees. As before, they found their progress impeded by the “ovens” of the piosoca; and despite their utmost exertions, at noon they had made scarce three miles from their starting-point, for the gigantic tree that had sheltered them was full in sight, and even at sunset they could not have been more than six miles from it.
In the forest about them there appeared no resting-place for the night. The trees stood closely together, but without any interlacing of branches, or large horizontal limbs upon which they might seek repose. For a time it appeared as if they would have to spend the night upon the water. This was a grave consideration, and the guide knew it. With their bodies immersed during the midnight hours,—chill even within the tropics,—the consequences might be serious, perhaps fatal. One way or another a lodgement must be obtained among the tree-tops. It was obtained, but after much difficulty. The climbing to it was a severe struggle, and the seat was of the most uncomfortable kind. There was no supper, or comfort of any kind.
With the earliest appearance of day they were all once more in the water, and slowly pursuing their weary way. Now slower than ever, for in proportion to their constantly decreasing strength the obstruction from the piosocas appeared to increase. The lagoon, or at least its border, had become a labyrinth of lilies.
While thus contending against adverse circumstances, an object came under their eyes that caused a temporary abstraction from their misery. Something strange was lying along the water at the distance of about a quarter of a mile from them. It appeared to be some ten or twelve yards in length, and stood quite high above the surface. It was of a dark brown colour, and presented something the appearance of a bank of dried mud, with some pieces of stout stakes projecting upward. Could it be this? Was it a bank or spit of land?
The hearts of the swimmers leaped as this thought, inspired by their wishes, came into every mind. If land, it could be only an islet, for there was water all around it,—that they could perceive. But if so, an islet, if no bigger than a barn-door, would still be land, and therefore welcome. They might stretch their limbs upon it, and obtain a good night’s rest, which they had not done since the wreck of the galatea. Besides an islet ever so small—if only a sand-bar or bank of mud—would be a sort of evidence that the real dry land was not far off.
The dark form at first sight appeared to be close in to the trees, but Munday, standing up in the water, pronounced it to be at some distance from them,—between fifty and a hundred yards. As it was evident that the trees themselves were up to their necks in water, it could hardly be an island. Still there might be some elevated spot, a ridge or mound, that overtopped the inundation. Buoyed up by this hope, the swimmers kept on towards it, every eye scanning intently its outlines in order to make out its real character. All at once the projections which they had taken for stakes disappeared from the supposed spot of mud. They had assumed the shape of large wading birds of dark plumage, which, having spread their long, triangular wings, were now hovering above the heads of the swimmers, by their cries proclaiming that they were more astonished at the latter than they could possibly be at them.