George Henty - With Cochrane the Dauntless

“That is a capital plan, Master Stephen,” Wilcox said. “I have not been thinking of a village, except as to how to get past it; but, as you say, there is no reason why we should not make off in a canoe.”

The next night they kept along just inside the trees, and had walked but two hours when they found that these ended abruptly, and that they stood on the edge of a clearing.

“Here is your village, Stephen.”

“Yes; one hardly hoped to find one so soon. Well, the first thing is to go down and search in the sand-hills for canoes.”

Four or five were found lying together in a hollow some twenty yards beyond high-water mark. They examined them carefully.

“Any of them will do,” Wilcox said, “but I think this is the best one. It is a little larger than the others, and the wood feels newer and sounder. I expect she is meant for four paddlers, and she will carry us and a fair cargo well.”

“That is settled, then,” Stephen said. “I propose that we go back some little distance from the village, get our cocoa-nuts at once, and bring them back and hide them in the bushes not far from where the clearing begins. It will save time to-morrow.”

“Why should we not go to-night?” Joyce asked. “It is only about nine o’clock now, and if we get the cocoa-nuts near here, we can make two or three journeys down to the boat with them, and be off before midnight.”

“So we might, Tom. What do you say, Wilcox?”

“The sooner the better, says I,” the sailor replied. “As Mr. Joyce says, we can be off by eight bells easy, and we shall be out of sight of this village long before daybreak.”

“Well, Wilcox, will you and Mr. Joyce get the cocoa-nuts, and while you are doing it I will creep round this clearing and get bananas. I can see lots of their broad leaves over there. As I get them I will bring them to this corner, and by the time you have got a store of nuts, I shall have a pile of bananas. I think you had better go four or five hundred yards away before you cut the nuts, for they come down with such a thump that any native who is awake here might very well hear them.”

“We will go a bit away, sir,” Wilcox said, “but if we take pains to let them drop each time just as there is a puff of wind, there is no fear of their hearing them.”

They separated, and Stephen, entering the clearing, soon came upon a banana tree with long bunches of the fruit. Two of these were as much as he could carry, and his portion of the work was soon done, and indeed he had carried them down to the water’s edge before his companions had brought three loads of cocoa-nuts to the point where he had left them. He helped to take these down, then the canoe was lifted and carried to the edge of the water, being taken in far enough to float each time the surf ran up. Then the fruit was placed in it.

“I wish we had poor Mr. Towel with us to take her through the surf,” Wilcox said.

“I wish we had; but fortunately it is not very heavy.”

“No, sir; it is sure not to be,” the sailor said. “I have noticed that they always put their villages at points where the surf is lighter than usual. I suppose the water is shallower, or deeper, or something. I don’t know what it is, but there is certainly a difference. Besides, there has been no wind to speak of since we landed, and the waves are nothing to what they were then. Now, gentlemen, as I am more accustomed to this sort of thing than you are, I will take the place in the stern, where I can steer her a bit. The moment she floats as the surf comes in, and I see the chance is a good one, I will give the word; then we will all paddle as hard as we can, and go out as the surf draws back, so as to meet the next wave before it breaks. Everything depends on that.”

They took their places in the canoe, and grasped the paddles that they had found in her. Two or three waves passed under them, and then they saw one higher than the others approaching them.

“We will go out on the back of this one,” Wilcox said. “Paddle the moment the surf lifts the canoe, and don’t let her be washed up a foot.”

The wave fell over with a crash, and a torrent of foam rushed up towards them.

“Now,” Wilcox exclaimed, as the white line reached the bow, “paddle for your lives!”

For a moment, in spite of their desperate efforts, they were carried upwards, then the canoe seemed to hang in the air, and they were riding forward with the speed of an arrow on the receding water.

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