With Cochrane the Dauntless. Henty George Alfred

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СКАЧАТЬ risky affair,” the sailor said after a pause. “Mr. Towel is a good officer, I don’t say as he isn’t, but I would rather see an older head on his shoulders just at present. It is all very well for him to say as there may be no natives within twenty miles; but how is he to know that? There may be a village just round the turn of the river. All these chaps are pirates when they get a chance, every mother’s son of them, and there may be half a dozen war-canoes lying a mile up this river. It would be natural that they should be somewhere near its mouth, ready to start out if a sail is sighted, or news is brought to them that there is a ship anchored off a coast village within a few hours’ row. As to firing a gun, in my opinion it is just madness. As he says himself, meat won’t keep two days, and it is just flying in the face of Providence to risk attracting the attention of the natives, for the sake of a day’s rations of fresh meat.

      “It was all very well to bring the boat up here so as to lie out of sight of any canoes that happened to be passing along the shore; but I would much rather have left her where she was, though I allows it would have been risky. I would have just chucked the sail over her and covered that with an inch or so of sand, so that it would not have been noticed by a boat a short way out. But if there is a village up here, why, a boat might come down any moment to do some fishing, and there we should be caught at once; as for getting away with them makeshift paddles, it would not be worth even thinking of. I hope our chaps will come back without having seen a monkey or a village, or as much as a banana, then the mate won’t be hankering to go up again; and I should make free to advise him to get the boat up amongst the trees here till we have decided that the ship won’t come, and agree to make a start.”

      “I am with you to some extent, Wilcox, and I do think that it is a risky thing going up the river. If we were to fill up with cocoa-nuts they would last us for a week anyhow, and then when we saw another grove of them we could land and load up again.”

      “You can’t take an observation, I suppose, Mr. Stephen, and find out in a rough way whereabouts we are?”

      Steve shook his head. “No, Wilcox. If I had had my quadrant I might have got near enough to have made a rough guess, for I have got that watch I bought in my pocket, and I have timed it every day with the chronometers, and find that it does not gain more than half a minute a day, so that at the present moment it is not much more than a minute out by them, and if I had had the quadrant I could have made a pretty close calculation. We were about a degree and a half south at noon before that cyclone struck us, but I don’t see that that would help us now.”

      “It is a pity, sir,” the sailor said, “for it would help us wonderful if we could find out our position within fifty miles or so.”

      “I wish we could, Wilcox;” and Stephen sat for some time thinking. At last he said, “I might, anyhow, find out in a rough sort of way whether we have been blown north or south. We will see if we can find a perfectly straight stick, ten or twelve feet long. If I fix that upright in sand the shadow would help us. It was the 25th of March yesterday, and the sun at noon would therefore be exactly overhead of the line at twelve o’clock. Therefore, if we have been blown north, we should get a very short shadow to the south at twelve o’clock; whereas if we have been blown south, there would be a shadow north. It might not be more than an inch long; but even that would tell us something.”

      They selected a long straight stick, drove it deeply into the sand, walked round it several times so as to assure themselves that it was perfectly upright, and then returned again to the shelter of the trees. An hour later the sound of a gun came to their ears.

      “He has found some of them monkeys,” Wilcox growled.

      Three more shots were heard. “How far are they off, do you think?” Stephen asked.

      “I dunno, sir. If it was on the open sea and calm like this, I should say they might be two or three miles, but in this ’ere forest there ain’t no saying at all. I don’t reckon they would be above two miles anyhow, that is if the stream is as strong up there as it is here. They were making very slow way against it when they started. I reckon they have been gone about an hour, and they would not have got more than two miles away against this stream. Well, I hope that they will be content now and turn back again.”

      Half an hour passed, then they heard a gun again; it was quickly followed by another and another.

      “More monkeys,” Wilcox exclaimed in a tone of disgust.

      “I hope it is monkeys,” Stephen said. “Listen. There are four more shots close together.”

      The sailor leapt to his feet. “I believe you are right, sir, that cussed firing has brought the natives down upon them. They would not want to keep on firing at the monkeys. We shall hear in a minute if they fire again. They have all emptied their pieces. If they load quick and fire again it will be a bad sign. There they are!” he broke off as two shots were heard. “I am afraid that settles it, sir, and settles us too, for if they are attacked there ain’t a ghost of a chance of their getting away, and there won’t be much more chance of our doing so.”

      Four more shots were heard, and then all was quiet. “Now, sir, we will be getting pretty deep in among these trees, keeping close to the bank, so that we can look through the bushes without being seen. If the boat comes along all right, there ain’t no harm done; if it don’t come along after a bit, we shall know what has happened.”

      Picking up his gun, Wilcox was about to turn off into the wood when Stephen said:

      “We had better take three or four cocoa-nuts each, Wilcox. There is no saying whether we shall come back to this place, and it is as well to have something to eat.”

      Each tied some nuts together, threw them over their shoulders, and started along the river bank. The stream was bordered by a thick undergrowth, which afforded an effectual screen for anyone behind it. After going for about a quarter of a mile they stopped to listen. There was a faint throbbing sound in the air.

      “Paddles!” Steve exclaimed.

      “Ay, and native paddles, sir. Our men don’t paddle like that, and I fancy,” he went on after listening again, “there is more than one canoe. That settles it, sir. There isn’t a chance of our ever seeing our mates again.”

      “Oh, don’t say that, Wilcox! Even if some have been killed, the others may have been taken prisoners. I can’t believe they have all been murdered.”

      “Well, I hope not, sir, but it looks very black. If they had pounced upon them sudden, and there had been no fighting, they might have kept them prisoners a day or two till they made a grand feast and killed them; but that firing we heard settles it to my mind. I should say there ain’t no manner of doubt that our fellows will have killed some of the niggers, and I expect that the two canoes closed in on them, and then it would be all over in a minute.”

      When the canoes were within a quarter of a mile the rowers broke into a sort of chant, with occasional wild shouts and yells.

      “There they come,” Wilcox said as two long canoes, paddling abreast, rounded a turn in the river a short distance away. “There must be something like fifty men in each canoe.”

      In a short time the canoes came along at a high rate of speed. The sailor gave a sudden exclamation of fury.

      “What is it?” Steve asked.

      “Don’t you see, sir, in the stern of each of the canoes, piled up by the steering oar, there are some heads.”

      “I can’t look at them,” Steven said, drawing back from his peep-hole through the leaves.

      “They are whites,” СКАЧАТЬ