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Five minutes sufficed to put all on board, and that space of time was also sufficient to enable Spinkie to observe from his retreat in the bushes that a departure was about to take place; he therefore made for the shore with all speed and bounded to his accustomed place beside the mast. Taking their places they pushed off so softly that they might well have been taken for phantoms.
"All right, massa," said the negro, in the same cheerful free-and-easy tone in which he was wont to express his willingness to obey orders whether trifling or important. "Don' forgit Spinkie, massa." "You may be sure I won't do that," replied the hermit. "Come along, monkey!"
In a small hut by the waterside the hermit found the friend a Malay to whom his canoe had been consigned, and, in a long low shed close by, he found the canoe itself, with the faithful Spinkie in charge. "Don't go near the canoe till you've made friends with the monkey," said the Malay in his own tongue, as he was about to put the key in the door. "Why not?" asked the hermit.
To many men the fierce glare of the equatorial sun might have proved trying, but Nigel belonged to the salamander type of humanity and enjoyed the great heat. Van der Kemp seemed to be similarly moulded, and as for Moses, he was in his native element so was Spinkie.
"Is that what he is doing?" asked Nigel of the negro. "Oh no, Massa Nadgel," said Moses. "Spinkie nebber ketch cold an' hab no need ob a pocket-hang-kitcher. He only tickles his nose wid 'is tail. But he's bery fond ob doin' dat."
Even Spinkie lay in a melancholy little heap in the lee scuppers. You think this a far-fetched coincidence, good reader! Well, all we can say is that we could tell you of another a double-coincidence, which was far more extraordinary than this one, but as it has nothing to do with our tale we refrain from inflicting it on you.
But now, although the travellers were some miles distant from Krakatoa, the gloom was so impervious that Nigel, from his place in the centre of the canoe, could not see the form of poor Spinkie which sat clinging to the mast only two feet in front of him save when a blaze from Perboewatan or one of the other craters lighted up island and ocean with a vivid glare.
And it seems to me that the speaking eyes of Spinkie, to whom I have just given a bit of biscuit, tell of a similar spirit."
The tiny sails caught the puff, causing the canoe to lean slightly over, and glide with a rippling sound through the water, while Moses steered by means of his paddle. "You have put Spinkie down below, I think," said Nigel, who had been struck more than once with the hermit's extreme tenderness and care of the little creature. "Yes, to prevent it from being washed overboard.
"Now you keep still," he said in solemn tones and with warning looks to Spinkie. "If you keep fidgitin' about you'll capsize de boat. You hear?" Spinkie veiled his real affection for the negro under a look of supreme indifference, while Winnie went off into a sudden giggle at the idea of such a small creature capsizing the boat.
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