While Jack Rogers, with Lieutenant Evans and his unfortunate boat’s crew, took the southern branch of the river, Mr Hemming, with Murray and Adair, pulled away in the boat up the northern channel, each party believing that they were following the track of the schooner of which they were in search. On dashed Lieutenant Hemming’s boat, the crew, as British seamen always will when work is to be done, bending bravely to their oars. They also, as had the other boat, met a strong current.
“Hurrah, my lads, hurrah!” shouted the lieutenant, bending forward almost mechanically to give time to their strokes. “If the chase has gone up the channel, we must take care that she does not creep away from us, that is all.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Dick Needham. “No fear but we’ll hunt her up if she is above water.”
In a chase on shore some signs discernible either by the eyes or the olfactory nerves are perceptible by which the pursuers may be guided, but the gallant seamen had only hope on this occasion to lead them on. That, however, was enough. The scenery of this branch was as monotonous as that of the other. Mangrove bushes, with a few tall palms appearing over them, lined the banks, and here and there an opening left blank by nature, or perhaps made by the dark-skinned natives.
“I wonder if, after all, the schooner did come up this way,” observed Paddy Adair sagaciously. “If she went up the other, I don’t think she could.”
His remark of course produced a laugh. No great amount of wit was required to do that. They looked about in every direction, to discover some one from whom they might obtain information, but no one was seen.
“It is not very likely the black fellows would trouble themselves with telling us the truth, so it doesn’t much matter,” said Paddy. “They are all in league with the slavers, from the king who dresses up on great occasions in a cocked-hat, top-boots, and an old blanket, to poor Quasho, who has never had his nakedness covered since he was born.”
Notwithstanding their want of success, still they perseveringly pulled on.
Suddenly Murray put his hand on Adair’s shoulder, pointing at the same time with the other ahead. “I say, Terence, what do you see away there at the end of the reach?” he asked. “Does it not look to you like the stern of a vessel?”
“So like it that it must be one,” said Hemming. “Hurrah! the slaver must be ours after all.”