"Clingman and Wales, jump on the raft with the boathooks, and crowd the stuff over to the starboard side," said the captain when he had found the place he wanted.
He stopped the boat, and then went ahead, to enable the men to get upon the mass, after they had thrown a couple of boards upon it to stand on. Backing her again, he hugged the starboard side of the stream, and drew the raft abreast of the place, and close to it, where it was to be left. The men on it hooked into the screw-pines, and hauled it into the opening. Pulling vines from the trees, they moored it where it was. As soon as the two men came aboard the boat, the captain went ahead again.
"You did that job handsomely, Captain Scott," said Louis. "I thought the only way we could get through was by cutting a passage for the boat."
"That would have taken too long," replied Scott, as he called Clinch to the wheel. "Mind your eye! for the river is very crooked up here. Look out for the swing as she goes around the bends."
The boat had not gone a great distance when she came to a considerable expanse of territory which had been swept over by fire. The party did not think that the green bushes would burn; but they had burned so that nothing was left of them but the blackened stems, and there was no room for an argument.
"When the fire gets started, it scorches and dries the bushes till they will burn," Louis explained. "But what are we coming to now?" he asked, looking ahead where the country seemed to be level, and covered with a sheet of water, in which the screw-pines were abundant.
"That must be one of your lakes, Louis," added the captain.
"If it is mine, I will sell it to you," replied he.
"I don't want to buy; but I am not so sure that we can get through as shoal a place as that seems to be, for it is only the spreading out of the river. The greater the expanse, the less the depth. How is that, Achang?"
"Plenty water; float the boat," answered the Bornean. "Little Padang Lake. Plenty pandanus."