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Here they met with a large body of unarmed blacks, who after making a great many signs, came up and presented them with some spears and wommerahs, which they had concealed in the mangroves, possibly as an earnest of peace. They also brought them a villainous compound, in some dilly-bags, a mixture of mangrove-roots and berries, pounded up into a pulp, of a yellowish color.
The creek was precisely similar in character to all the others with which I had previously made acquaintance; but so narrow and shallow at the point where I had hit it off that I saw at once, to my vexation, that I must have a further scramble among the mangrove-roots, exposed all the while to the attacks of countless hosts of bloodthirsty mosquitoes, if I would gratify my desire to see Senor Madera's vessel.
They bask in the sun, and hunt for food, raising themselves on their fleshy fins.... When pursued, they take great springs, using their tails and fins for the purpose; and if they cannot escape into the sea, they will dive down the burrow of a land-crab, or dash into a bunch of mangrove-roots." They are very wary, having eyes like swivels, to turn in all directions.
If it is near evening time now, you can watch it becoming incarnate, creeping and crawling and gliding out from the side creeks and between the mangrove-roots, laying itself upon the river, stretching and rolling in a kind of grim play, and finally crawling up the side of the ship to come on board and leave its cloak of moisture that grows green mildew in a few hours over all.
I got without compunction into a canoe some three feet wide; and was shoved by three Negroes down a long winding ditch of mingled mud, water, and mangrove-roots. To keep one's self and one's luggage from falling out during the journey was no easy matter; at one moment, indeed, it threatened to become impossible.
The brute had luckily got hold, not of her poor little body, but of her bathing-dress, and held on stupidly. The girls pulled; the bathing-dress, which was, luckily, of thin cotton, was torn off; the Huillia slid back again with it in his mouth into the dark labyrinth of the mangrove-roots; and the girl was saved.
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