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The banks were, at intervals fringed with mangroves, the country behind being very open plains, with patches of dwarf gums scattered here and there. The brown whistling wood-ducks were in great abundance at the yawl's furthest; and in three shots I bagged twenty.
He could hear nothing of what went on outside; the rolling and plunging of the overturned yawl continued. Where had Torry gone? And the ensign, and the other members of the yawl's crew? Once Whistler had spent a long time in the sea, drifting about on a hatchcover; having been saved from that perilous adventure, he was not likely easily to give up hope now.
It was necessary to reduce our allowance forthwith, and I put it to Yawl whether we could not make for some nearer port than Callao. Better risk the loss of my diamonds than die of hunger and thirst. Yawl's answer was unfavorable. The nearest port of the coast as to distance was the farthest as to time.
Then he lay on a cushion in the cockpit until dark came and the green shore of the little bay grew dim and then black and the dusky water under the yawl's counter was split with the phosphorescent flashes of darting fish. Across a peninsula, on the weather side of the Cape, he could hear the seas thud and the surf growl like the distant booming of heavy batteries.
When the prisoners gave three cheers to the yawl's crew, as an expression of their joy at their success, the Captain ordered all of us to be driven below at the point of the bayonet, and there we were confined the remainder of the day. "These five men escaped, greatly to the mortification of the captain and officers of the prison-ship.
Our boat did not return; we sent our pinnace with the men armed, to see what was the occasion of the yawl's stay; for we were afraid, that the Spaniards had a garrison there, and might have seized them. We put out a signal for our boat, and the Duchess showed a French ensign.
They couldn't have it on the mainland for its being a nuisance." Nevertheless, she was one of the first to leap ashore when the yawl's bow grated in a pebbly cove, and carried her pretty but incongruous little slippers through the seaweed, wet sand, and slimy cobbles with a heroism that redeemed her vanity.
The yawl's head was kept to the wind and sea; but it was doubtful if she made any progress. "Pull, men! Pull!" shouted the ensign again and again. He inspired them, and perhaps their straining at the oars did keep the yawl from overturning at that time. Yet such ultimate fate for it seemed unavoidable.
With a will, men! The cub enjoys sounding for the further reason that the eyes of the passengers are watching all the yawl's movements with absorbing interest if the time be daylight; and if it be night he knows that those same wondering eyes are fastened upon the yawl's lantern as it glides out into the gloom and dims away in the remote distance.
"'Without the slightest notice of its approach a terrific squall from the northward took the yawl's sails flat aback, and the ballast which we had trained to windward, being thus suddenly changed to leeward, she was upset in an instant. "'Our crew and passenger were nine men 'twas terrible to listen to the cries of the poor fellows, some of whom could swim, and others who could not.
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