“If the water is so dangerous, I fear we will suffer before we can return,” replied Miss Leslie, and she held up the flask.
“What!” exclaimed Blake. “Half gone already? That was Winthrope.”
“He was very thirsty. Could we not boil a potful of the river water?”
“Yes, when the ebb gets strong, if we run too dry. First, though, we’ll make a try for cocoanuts. Let’s hit out for the nearest grove now. The main thing is to keep moving.”
As he spoke, Blake caught up the pot and his club, and started for the thorn clump, leaving the skin, together with the meat and the salt, for Miss Leslie to carry. Winthrope was wakened by a touch of Blake’s foot, and all three were soon walking away from the seashore, just within the shady border of the mangrove wood.
At the first fan-palm Blake stopped to gather a number of leaves, for their palm-leaf hats were now cracked and broken. A little farther on a ruddy antelope, with lyrate horns, leaped out of the bush before them and dashed off towards the river before Blake could string his bow. As if in mockery of his lack of readiness, a troupe of large green monkeys set up a wild chattering in a tree above the party.
“I say, Miss Jenny, do you think you can lug the pot, if we go slow? It isn’t far now.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good for you, little woman! That’ll give me a chance to shoot quick.”
They moved on again for a hundred yards or more; but though Blake kept a sharp lookout both above and below, he saw no game other than a few small birds and a pair of blue wood-pigeons. When he sought to creep up on the latter, they flew into the next tree. In following them, he came upon a conical mound of hard clay, nearly four feet high.