“Yes, sir. And I don't mind telling you that, guilty or not, there aren't two men I'd feel safer with in the Southern Peninsula.”
“Oh, there ain't!” A feeble reply, but the old Captain was beyond words. “Very well,” was all he could get out, “very well!”
With that they parted; and the boat, with the strangely selected party aboard, made for the shore.
“Now, Smiley,” said Beveridge, when the boat had left them on the sand, “how about our direction?”
“Exactly southwest from here. I suppose we shall have to make for Hewittson in a straight line, and see if we can't get there first.” A sort of road led off in a southwesterly direction, and this they followed for an hour. Then it swung off to the left, and they plunged into the forest, from now on to be guided only by the compass. The afternoon wore along. For two hours, three hours, four hours, they tramped through the forest, which now opened out into a vista of brown carpet and cool shade, now ran to a blackened jungle of stumps and undergrowth; but always underfoot was the sand, no longer white but yellow and of a dustlike quality. It gave under the foot at every step; it rose about them and got into their throats and finally into their tempers.
“Say, Smiley,” called Wilson. He had swung his coat over his shoulder; his face was streaked with sweat and dirt; the spring was gone from his stride. “Say, Smiley, where are those streams you were talking about?”
“Give it up.”
“This is a pretty place you're getting us into.”
“Shut up, Bert!” said Beveridge. “You tend to business, and quit talking.”
“Who's talking? Can't I ask a civil question?”