In less time than I've taken to speak, however, the full space of sky aloft was turning clear, the sea far away suddenly shone out blue, with the surges tipped white; you saw a sparkling star high over it sink slowly in, and the fog spread off the water near us, till here and there you caught the muffled-up shape of a big tree or two looming through, not half-a-mile off our starboard quarter; the mist creeping over the headland till the sharp peak of it stood out against its shadow on the shoulder of a hill beyond, and old Bob Martin's single clump of cocoas on the rise, waving in landward from the brisk sea-breeze. One passenger after another came peeping sleepily out of the companion-hatch, at the men clearing away the wreck of the spars, and swabbing the quarter-deck down; but scarce had Smith, one of the young writers, reached the poop, when he gave a shout that covered both poop-ladders in no time, with people scrambling over each other to get up. Next minute you'd have fancied them a knot of flamingoes with their wings out, as the bright red daybreak brought out the edge of the woods far astern, through a hazy lane in the purple mist, topped so with stray cocoa-nut trees and cabbage-palms, dabbled like brushes in the colour, that they scarce knew them to be woods at all, and not a whole lot of wild savages fresh from other business of the kind, coming down with all sorts of queer tools upon us; more especially when one heard such a chorus of unaccountable cries, whistling, and screaming, as seemed to struggle with the sound of the sea ahead of us, and the plash alongside. The huge round sun struck hot crimson along the far turn of the reach, with all manner of twisted blots upon him, as it were, and the very grass and long reeds seemingly rustling into his face, so one didn't for the moment know him either; while the muddy chocolate-coloured eddies, sweeping and closing beyond the ship's rudder, glittered and frothed up like blood; and every here and there, along the streak of light, the head of a log or a long branch came dipping up terribly plain no wonder the old Seringapatam had apparently turned tail to it all, ready to bolt if she could. Almost as soon as you took your hands off your eyes, though, and could see without a red ball or two before them,—there was the nearest shore growing out toward our starboard bulwark all along, crowded with wet green woods, up into steaming high ground—all to eastward a dazzle of light, with two or three faint mountain-peaks shooting up far off in it, and a woody blue hill or so between; while here and there a broad bright hazy spoke off the sun came cutting down into the forest, that brought out a patch full of long big leaves, ten times greener than the rest, and let you look off the deck into the heart of it amongst the stems over the bank. The jabber in the woods had passed off all at once with the dusk, the water deepening over the bar, and the tide running slower, so that every one's confused face turned breathless with delight as it grew stiller and stiller. The whole breadth of the river shone out by this time, full and smooth, to the opposite shore three times as far away, where the wood and bulrushes seemed to grow out of the water; a long thick range of low, muddy-looking mangroves, with a cover of dark-green, rounding from the farthest point one saw, down to some sandy hummocks near the mouth, and a ridge of the same, drifted up by the wind off the beach. Beyond that side there was nothing, apparently, but a rolling sweep of long coarse grass, with a few straggling cocoa-nut trees and baobabs, like big swollen logs on end, and taken to sprouting at top: a dun-coloured heave of land in the distance, too, that came out, as it got hotter, in a long desert-like, red brick-dust sort of a glare. The sole living things to be seen as yet, were some small birds rising up out of the long grass, and the turkey-buzzards sailing high over all across, as if on the look-out.
The air was so cool and clear, however, from the tornado overnight—not a cloud in the sky, and the strange scent of the land reaching us as the dew rose off it—you could see far and wide, with a delicious feeling of it all, that kept every one standing fixed on the spot where he first gained the deck, even the men looking over their shoulders with the ropes in their fists, and the fresh morning breeze lifting one's hair. Surprised as the passengers were, nobody spoke a word, except the three or four children shouting, dancing, and pointing together; without being noticed, till all at once the whole poopful burst into one confusion of questions and exclamations, running hither and thither, shaking hands and jostling each other like distracted people. I had a spyglass at my eye, making out the other shore, when, turning round in the middle of it, the first thing I saw was Violet Hyde's face, as she stood with one little foot on the stair-head behind me, holding the rail with one hand, her eyes sparkling and her parted lips murmuring like one in a dream. "Oh, Mr Collins!" exclaimed she, breathless; "what is this? Where are we—is it fairyland? A river!" "Yes, in Africa," I said; "but whether it's the Bembarooghe or the—" "That fearful, fearful evening!" continued she, shuddering: "I saw the frightful sky, and heard the storm—and now!—Were we not in some very great danger, sir?" "Yes, ma'am, we were," replied I, as stiffly as I could; "but, happily, its over now," and I gave my cap a lift to move off, uneasy as I was every moment, lest Sir Charles should catch me speaking again to his daughter. However, Miss Hyde was gazing eagerly at the land, and I had to wait. "What lovely, lovely green!" she half whispered: "oh, if one could only tread upon!—so unEnglish those strange tall trees look! are they not cocoa-trees and—and—" Suddenly her voice faltered, and she turned round with her bright blue eyes swimming in tears—"How—how thankful we should be that we are not—like our poor, poor friends, who were lost!" exclaimed she. I thought of the poor captain below in his cot, but next moment I was explaining, to her sheer amazement, how the real truth of the matter stood, though, if possible, it seemed to horrify her still more. "I can't think what they may be," I rapped out; "but if I had the command of this ship, I'd up anchor this very hour, and go out—at least as soon as the tide ebbed; but, at any rate, at the Cape I mean to get hold of some schooner or other, and if it were to China, why, I'll cruise after 'em till I—" "Then you think—" began she, and an arch, inquisitive sort of look danced in both her eyes as she turned away to watch the shore again, saying slowly, "You are a—a naval gentleman, then, Mr West—Mr Collins?" I tried to stammer out something by way of an explanation, but it wouldn't do, and I said, "At any rate, I'm no better, by this time, than an idler aboard here, ma'am!"
All at once I caught a side-look from her eyes, that wasn't meant for me, as she glanced over the poop-netting. Half provoking and half sweet it was, though, and it made my brain somehow or other seem to spin round, till a little after, before I well knew what I was about, I was holding the long spy glass for her to see the bank of the river,—her warm breath coming on my ear as I stooped before her, near enough to have kissed the muslin on her shoulder, while her rosy mouth changed with every new spot that the glass brought near; and she had to hold one taper fore-finger on the other eye-lid to keep it shut, so that I could dwell on her face as if she'd been asleep. "There, there!" exclaimed she, "are actually flowers—with such immense leaves! And now—an enormous tree, with roots hanging from the branches, and other stems growing up into them. Why, yes!—is not that a banian-tree, Mr—," and she looked away at me, when of course the tree was vanished, and instead of that, the rather undeniable expression of a fellow in love, two or three inches off, bent fair upon her. Violet Hyde coloured a little, and looked in again. "And—I think—" continued she, "I see—oh, two such beautiful creatures—deer, I think—coming out to drink from the river!" All this time, the ecstacies of the rest kept up the noise and confusion: the young lady's maid was gaping open-mouthed at the shore, not even noticing her young mistress's straw bonnet fall off, and I had just picked it up with one hand, to put it quietly over that matchless nut-brown hair of hers, shining suddenly in the sun like silk, when the Judge's voice sang out sharp from the other stair, "Violet, child, you'll have a sun-stroke. Kitmagar, you scoundrel, beebee sahib punkah lao, sirrah!" I held on to the telescope like grim death, while that eternal punkah was hoisted over us both, the Judge eyeing me somewhat coolly for the first moment. "Well, well, Mr Westwood," said he, however, "you've got rid of that proud freak of yours;—such behaviour as yours yesterday, I assure you, I shouldn't have endured from any one else, young man! But, my dear boy," added he, suddenly, "from what I can gather, indeed saw myself last night, I am convinced we owe you a very great deal—even, I suspect, the safety of the entire vessel!" Miss Hyde had left off using the glass, and, as I stood up, she gave me a quick glance of amazement. "Mere chance, sir," I stammered. "Why," said Sir Charles, "I saw you at the steerage in the middle of the hurricane, when I believe the actual officers of the ship had left it in dismay. I tell you what, Mr Westwood, you're a bold fellow; and your uncle and I must see in India if we can't reward you in some way, my dear boy!" All this fondling style of thing, and for little more than a piece of luck, would have disgusted me, if I hadn't been more taken up with watching the side of Violet Hyde's face, as she listened for sounds in the woods ashore. "Strange wasn't it, Violet, my dear," continued he to his daughter, that my friend the Councillor's nephew should have gone out in the same Indiaman, so fortunately—though of course, after all, it was the first this season." "Ah!" said she, starting, "I beg pardon, papa,—what did you—weren't you talking of the river?" "Don't you hear, child," said the Judge, "I said it was a curious coincidence, Mr Westwood's going in this vessel." "Oh yes, indeed!" answered she, and couldn't help looking down a little confounded. But the lady's-maid was putting on her tiny slipper, which had come off, while her father mentioned that of course I'd had practical reasons for not owning my profession hitherto;—meaning, I suppose, that I didn't speak for fear of having to work, like the monkeys—though the sharp old lawyer must have had a better guess by this time, and queer enough it must have been to see her face, listening to him as he explained it all. I stood biting my lips, meanwhile—two or three times on the point of telling him it was all nonsense about my being a nephew of any hanged old nabob whatever; when Sir Charles said carelessly he should leave the Seringapatam, if possible, at the Cape of Good Hope, as he couldn't trust safely to the present officers.
Just then up got the merry chant of the men running round with the capstan-bars, to get up anchor; the chief officer wishing, as it was found, to carry her farther into the river with the breeze—for the sake of filling our water-casks the easier, according to him, but more likely out of sheer spite at what had been done without him. What with eagerness in the cuddy to get on shore and see the woods, the breakfast below was a rare scene, no one minding what he did, even to rushing slap into a couple of ladies' berth for his boots, or laying a couple of loaded Joe Mantons into somebody's bed, swallowing biscuit and butter on the way.
Suddenly we heard the splash of paddles in the water, with a hail in some foreign tongue or other, and hurried on deck in a body; where we found the ship tiding it slowly up, under jibs and foretopsail, and beginning to open a longer reach where the river seemed to narrow in. A black-eyed, black-bearded fellow, with a tallowy, yellow, sweaty sort of complexion, in a dirty jacket, drawers, and short boots, and an immense grass hat, shouting Portuguese louder and louder into the first-mate's ear, till he actually put both hands together and roared through them,—pointing to himself now and then, as if surprised he wasn't known. All at once, evidently quite disgusted, he turned and looked over the side, saying something to one of the ugliest and most ill-looking mulattoes I ever saw, who sat in the stern of a long rough canoe, hollowed out of some tree, with two naked black rowers, less of the real nigger than himself, as they leant grinning up at the bulwarks with their sharp teeth, that appeared as if they'd been filed to a point. The mulatto gloomed, but he gave no answer, and as one of the cadets and I knew a little Portuguese, we managed together to get something out of the fellow on deck; though at noticing me for the first time that morning, I saw Finch turn red with surprise. We understood the man to ask if we wanted nothing particular in the river, the meaning of which I saw better on bethinking me of the fire along the bush inside the headland, that had let me see the marks of it—no doubt a signal to some craft they had taken us for. However, so soon as he heard we needed no more than water and spars, after musing a minute, and speaking again to Rodriguez, as he called the mulatto, he said he would pilot us to a convenient berth himself, for two or three dollars; notwithstanding his title was, as he said, Don José Jeronimo Santa somebody, commandant of the Portuguese fort something else. The river, we found, was the Nouries or the Cuanené, where they had a settlement called Caconda, a good way up; a remarkably bad country, he gave us to know, and not worth staying in, from the number of flies, and the elephants having got into a cursed way of burying their tusks,—except, he hinted, for the plenty of blacks, all anxious to be sold and to see foreign countries; but the trade was nothing yet, absolutely nothing, said he, blowing his nose without a pocket handkerchief, and suiting the act to the word, as he mentioned his notion of throwing it up and going farther north-west. By this time we had stood over to the lowest shore, till you could see the thick coffee-coloured mud in among the roots and suckers of the dark-green mangroves, with their red pods bursting under their rank-looking leaves,—and over them, through the tall coarse guinea-grass, to the knots of feathery cocoas behind, swarming with insects: when he gave the sign to go about, one of his blacks heaving a lead, and grunting out the depth of water, as the ship made a long stretch across towards the woody side again, and Don José all the time taking it as easy as if the quarter-deck were his own, while he asked for a cigar and lighted it. Joke though he did, yet I couldn't like the fellow at all; however, as soon as she got pretty near the shore, about a quarter of a mile from the mouth of what seemed a wide creek, glittering up between a high fringe of cane and bamboo clumps, he had the sails clued up, a single anchor let go in four or five fathoms, and our Portuguese friend got his money and bundled over the side, pulling quietly ashore.
The tide by this time was quite still, and the breeze sank almost at once, as we were shut in from the sea; when we were surprised to see the striped Portuguese flag rise off a tall bamboo stick, among the bushes on the open shore, nearly abreast of us; where a low, muddy-like wall was to be made out, with something of a thatched roof or two, and a sort of rude wooden jetty running before it into the water. Shortly after, Don José came paddling out again, and got on board, this time with an old cocked hat on, excusing himself for not having fired a gun—which was to save us expense, he remarked, being particular friends—seeing that he'd got to demand twelve dollars of harbour dues and duties, whereas, if he saluted, he must have charged fourteen. The cool impudence of this brought the chief officer from the capstan; but the steady face of the fellow, and the glance he took round the deck when the cadet told him he'd better be off at once, made me think he had something or other to back him. Mr Finch, as usual, fumed up into a passion, and told the men to fling him over into his canoe, which they accordingly did, without the least nicety about it; the Portuguese next minute picking himself up, and standing straight, with the look of a perfect devil, as he shook his fist at the whole ship, while the canoe slid off to the shore.
Budge even so much as a single fathom, at present, we could not; and most of us were too much in the spirit of fun and venture to care a fig for having made an enemy of Don José-So-on, as the cadet called him; indeed, it seemed rather to set a finer point on people's admiration of the green jungly-looking shore next to us, with its big aloes and agaves growing before the bush, and all sorts of cocoas, palms, monkey-bread, and tall white-flaked cotton-trees, rising in every way out from over the rest. For my part, I thought more of the Portuguese's interest, after all, than his hatred—which proved correct, by his soon sending out a sulky message by the mulatto, offering to sell us fowls and a bullock, at no ordinary price. However, all hands from the cabin were mad already to get ashore somewhere, and the cadets bristling with fowling-pieces and rifles, each singing out that he was ready to supply the whole ship with fresh meat; so the mulatto had to sheer off, with a boat nearly lowered over his head. From where we lay at the time, what with the large creek off one bow, and the broad river ahead of us, spreading brimful along to the light, the water had the look of a huge lake, fringed in by a confused hazy bluish outline steeping in the heat, where the distance clipped behind the lumps of keen verdure, showering over a dark mangrove-covered point. Before the two large quarter-boats could be got ready for the ladies and the rest of us, in fact, we heard the gig full of writers and cadets beginning to pop away at everything they saw alive, out of sight from the ship; till at last we were afloat, too, pulling slowly into the middle of the stream, and the men eyeing us lazily as they turned-to about the rigging, to send up new spars in place of those lost. The old Indiaman's big bows stood looming up broad astern of us on the sluggish eddies round her cable, with her tall steady fore-spars and furled yards rising white against the low line of marshy shore in the distance, and wavering in her shadow below, till the thick green branches of the next point shut her out, and the glare off the face of the creek shot level over all of us in the two cutters, wild with every kind of feeling that India passengers could have after two months' voyage.
For my own part, I should have had rather a suspicion how absurd it was to go a pleasuring in an African river we knew nothing about, especially when I saw that a day or two so long after the rains might suck it up, during ebb, into a pretty narrow mid-channel: all I thought of was, however, that I was steering the boat with Violet Hyde in it, the kitmagar holding his gaudy punkah over her before me, while the Judge, with his gun in his hands, was looking out as eagerly, for the time, as the four griffins were pulling furiously, in spite of the heat that made the sweat run into their eyes.
The other party were soon off ahead of us up the main river, under care of the Scotch surgeon, laughing, talking, and holloing in chase of the cadets who had first left. However, Sir Charles thought there was more likelihood of game along the creek, and the ladies fancied it something new, so I steered right into it; the fat midshipman, Simm, watching me critically as I handled the yokelines which he had given up to me in a patronising way, and the sailor in the bow regarding the exertions of the griffins with a knowingly serious expression, while he dabbled his flipper at ease in the water. As the tide steadied, this said creek proved to be a smaller river, apparently from the hilly country I had noticed beyond the woods; by the clearness of its current, that showed the pale yellow reflection of the close bamboo-brake on one side, deep down into the light—the huge sharp green notched aloe-leaves and fern shoving here and there out of it—the close, rank, stifling smell of rotten weeds and funguses giving place to the strange wild scent of the flowers, trailing and twisting in thick snaky coils close up the stems on our opposite hand, and across from branch to branch, with showers of crimson and pink blossoms and white stars; till, eager as the ladies were to put foot on land, 'twas no use looking as yet for a spot of room, let alone going farther in. The cadets were not long in being blown, either; when the midshipman, the bowman, and I had to relieve them. However, then I could look straight toward Violet Hyde's face, the shade of the scarlet punkah hanging over it, and her soft little straight nose and forehead catching a flickering burst from the leaves as we sheered at times under cover of the bank; while her eyelids, dropping from the glare, gave her bright eyes a half-sleepy sort of violet look, and it was only her lips that let you see how excited she felt. The griffin who had the tiller steering with the judgment of a tailor's 'prentice on a picnic to Twickenham, we came two or three times crash into the twigs of some half-sunk tree; then a blue bird like a heron would rise direct ahead of us, with its tall wet spindle legs and spurs glistening like steel behind it into the light, and a young snake in its sharp bill; or a gray crane rustled out of the cane from overhead, its long wings creaking in the air out of our sight. Suddenly you heard a long chirruping croak from a tree-frog, and the ground ones gave full chorus from farther in, whining and cackling, and peep-peep-peeping in one complete rush that died as suddenly away again, like thousands of young turkeys—then out in the midst of the quiet would come a loud clear wheetle-wheetling note from some curious fowl in an opening, with another of the same to match, dimmer amongst the thick of the bush. However everything of the kind seemed to sink down with the heat at noon, the very buzz of flies round every dark feather of the cocoas, and the musquito hum along the bank, getting fainter; till one heard the heat, as it were, creeping and thrilling down through the woods, with the green light that steeped into both edges of the long creek; every reed, cane, leaf, and twig, seemingly, at last giving it back again with a whispering, hushing crackle, and the broad fans of the palms tingling in it with rays from them, as they trembled before you in the glare, back into the high bundles of knotted and jointed bamboo, with their spiky-tufted crowns.
"Can you not almost feel the forest grow!" exclaimed Miss Hyde; while the boat floated quietly to one side, and her charming young face shining out from the punkah, before Master Gopaul's deucedly ugly one, coolly staring past his snub nose, made one think of a white English rose and a black puff-ball growing together under a toadstool; plenty of which, as red as soldiers' coats, and as big as targets, looked here and there out of the bank. It put new spirit into me to see her, but still we could do little more than shove across from one side to the other—till something all at once roused us up in the shape of a long scaly-like log, seemingly lying along in the sun, which tumbled off the edge with a loud splash, and two of the young fellows let drive from their fowling-pieces, just after the alligator had sunk to the bottom. Rather uncomfortable it was to come sheering right over him next moment, and catch a glimpse of his round red eyes and his yellow throat, as the mud and weeds rose over him. The other ladies shrieked, but Violet Hyde only caught hold of her father's arm and started back; though her blue eye and the clear cut of her pretty nostril opened out, too, for the moment her lips closed. Five minutes after, when a couple of large guinea-fowl sprang up, Sir Charles proved himself a better shot than the cadets, by dropping one of them over the water ahead of us, which was laid hold of by the reefer of the Indiaman, and stowed away fluttering into the stern-locker—Simm observing coolly that it was a scavengering carrion-sort of bird, but perhaps one of his messmates might like to take it home stuffed to his sister. The Judge merely smiled and patted the mid on the shoulder, remarking in great good-humour that he, Simm, would make a good attorney; and on we held, soaking to our shirts and panting, until the bowman hooked down the stem of a young plantain, with a huge bunch of full ripe yellow bananas under the long flapping leaves at its head, right into the midst of us, out of a whole clump of them, where the smooth face of the cove showed you their scarlet clusters of flowers and green round pods hanging over it, hidden as they were from above. Every man of us made a clutch, and the stem almost lifted Simm out of the boat with it, as it sprang back into the brake, rousing out a shower of gaudy-coloured butterflies, and a cloud of musquitoes, and making the paroquets scream inside; while the cadets' mouths were so full they couldn't speak, the reefer making a gulp with the juice seeming to come out at his eyes, the sailor spitting out his quid and stuffing in a banana, and the ladies hoping they were safe to eat; as I peeled the soft yellow rind off, and handed one to Violet Hyde, which she tasted at once. But if ever one enters into the heart of things in the tropics, I'd say 'tis when that same delicious taste melts through and through and all over you, after chewing salt junk for a space. I remember one foremast-man, who was always so drunk ashore he used to remember nothing in India but "scoffing[20] one bloody benanny," as he called it; "but hows'ever, Jack," he'd say, "'twas blessed good, ye know, and I'm on the look-out for a berth again, jist for to go and have another." One of us looked to the other, and Miss Hyde laughed and coloured a bit when I offered her a second, while her father said full five minutes after, "'Gad, Violet, it almost made me think I saw Garden Reach in the Hooghly, and the Baboo's Ghaut!"