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Updated: May 14, 2025
On the return to the ship, a fresh expedition was immediately despatched, Captain Wickharn himself taking command, and they pulled up the Fitzroy a distance of twenty-two miles in a straight direction, and ninety miles following the bend of the river. Returning, Stokes had the satisfaction of seeing a monster alligator reposing on the mud-bank, where he had such a near escape from drowning.
They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of towing off the "Guadala" began. With the help of her own engines, and the tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the mud-bank sideways into the deep water, the flatiron immediately under her stern, and the big eye of the four-inch gun almost peering through the window of the captain's cabin.
The prau hauled up on the mud-bank, at the junction of the two branches of the Pantai, rotted in the rain, warped in the sun, fell to pieces and gradually vanished into the smoke of household fires of the settlement. Only a forgotten plank and a rib or two, sticking neglected in the shiny ooze for a long time, served to remind Babalatchi during many months that he was a stranger in the land.
Soon after they saw monsters of a still more ferocious aspect; for while they were watching the sharks, two crocodiles put up their snouts, and crawled sluggishly out of the water upon a mud-bank, where they lay down, apparently with the intention of taking a nap in the sunshine. They were too far off, however, to be well seen.
Even in the gale and the fog of sand the skipper had not managed to find a convenient mud-bank on which to ground his steamer, and Mac told him he didn't think he was much of a sport. He had enjoyed Upper Egypt, especially journeying in so comfortable a manner, but, after all, it wouldn't be bad fun seeing the boys again, even if they were at Zeitoun Camp.
But as he approached, driven along at a good pace, suddenly the canoe seemed to be seized from beneath. He knew in a moment that he had grounded on soft mud, and sprang up to lower the sail, but before he could do so the canoe came to a standstill on the mud-bank, and the waves following behind, directly she stopped, broke over the stern.
That mud-bank saved us. The boat ploughed its way into the middle of it and then stuck. Finding that we were once more able to move according to our ideas, instead of being pitched and thrown about like peas in a bladder, we crept forward, and cut down the sail. We had had enough sailing. We did not want to overdo the thing and get a surfeit of it.
Where the mud-bank upon which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea. But at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu. Smith stood looking out towards the river. "My God!" he groaned. "My God!" He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.
A claim of 20,000l. and 5 per cent. of the land reclaimed for manorial rights over a mud-bank could hardly be overlooked by the Crown; and it is, I believe, not quite settled how this large sum of money and valuable land is to be divided, if at all.
In another moment the bow of the canoe slid upon the mud-bank of the river close to the slaver's boat, which was watched by a couple of the most villainous-looking men that ever took part in that disgraceful traffic.
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