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At last the coast changed and grew green and low and exceedingly muddy, and there were broad rivers whose bars were little islands standing three or four miles out at sea, and Bai-Jove-Judson hugged the shore more closely than ever, remembering what the Lieutenant of the "Mongoose" had told him.
"Heave these damned things over!" said the leader of the party, and one after another ten little gatlings splashed into the muddy water. The flatiron lay close to the bank. "When you're quite done," said Bai-Jove-Judson politely, "would you mind telling me what's the matter? I'm in charge here." "We're the Pioneers of the General Development Company," said the leader.
"Hold her steady, you son of a soldier!" shouted Bai-Jove-Judson, as the muzzle fell off the white house. Something rang as loudly as a ship's bell on the forward plates of the flat-iron, something spluttered in the water, and another thing cut a groove in the deck planking an inch in front of Bai- Jove-Judson's left foot.
Davies could, inch by inch, but only inch by inch, and Bai-Jove- Judson sat in the bows and gazed at various things on the bank as they came into line or opened out. The flatiron dropped down over the tail of the shoal, exactly where the buoy had been, and backed once before Bai-Jove-Judson was satisfied.
Then they went up stream for half an hour, put into shoal water by the bank and waited, with a slip-rope on the anchor. "Seems to me," said Mr. Davies deferentially, "like as if I heard some one a-firing off at intervals, so to say." There was beyond doubt a dull mutter in the air. "Seems to me," said Bai-Jove-Judson, "as if I heard a screw. Stand by to slip her moorings."
It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft gunboat, designed for the defence of rivers, of some two hundred and seventy tons' displacement, Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson, to be known for the future as Bai-Jove-Judson.
Juddy's a damned good fellow, though. I wish to goodness he was on the Mongoose with us." The Lieutenant of the "Mongoose" dropped into a chair and read the mail papers for an hour. Then he saw Bai-Jove-Judson in the street and shouted to him. Judson's eyes were very bright, and his figure was held very straight, and he moved joyously.
The flat-iron crept up to it cautiously, and a leadsman took soundings all around it from a dinghy, while Bai-Jove-Judson smoked and thought, with his head on one side. "About seven feet, isn't there?" said he. "That must be the tail end of the shoal. There's four fathom in the fairway. Knock that buoy down with axes. I don't think it's picturesque somehow."
She ran along a very badly-lighted coast, past bays that were no bays, where ugly flat-topped rocks lay almost level with the water, and very many extraordinary things happened that have nothing to do with the story, but they were all duly logged by Bai-Jove-Judson.
"I don't understand this how-d'you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming one atop of the other in a manner o' speaking. By all rights, they're our lawful prize." The Governor and the captain came to lunch in the absence of Mr. Davies. Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer, but what he had was given as by a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror.
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