Old Gold Part 19

Once there was a great matted-together patch of earth fully thirty yards long and half as wide, a veritable island with bushes still in their places, floating steadily seaward, and helping to explain the muddiness of the water and the shallowness of the ocean far out and to right and left of where the great river debouched.

Several consultations took place between the captain and Sir Humphrey as to the course to be taken, and the latter politely asked Briscoe to join in the discussion and give his opinion.

"No," he said; "I shan't say anything. I've only one idea about it, and that is to sail up one of the big rivers that run out of this, one that has not been explored before, so as to get amongst what's new."

"Well, that's what we want, isn't it, Free?" said Brace.

"Exactly."

"Then I needn't interfere in any way, gentlemen," said Briscoe. "I only say choose your river, and let's get to work: only pick one that has banks to it where we can land and do something."

"Then you don't want us to go as far as we can up one of the explored rivers?" said the captain, smiling.

"Certainly not," cried Brace.

"I understand, gentlemen. Give me time, and I'll take you to just the place you want. I know the river, but I never heard its name. It runs, as far as I could make out, due nor'-west: that is, as far as I went up.

After that it went no one knows where."

"That's the place," cried Brace. "Is it very big?"

"Tidy, squire," said the captain. "It's very deep, and there's plenty of room for the brig; and, what's better, the current's sluggish, so that we can make our way."

"What about the forest? Is it far back from the waterside?"

"Hangs over it, so that one can send a boat ash.o.r.e every night with a cable to make fast to one of the great trees, and save letting down and getting up the anchor."

"But about the river itself: can you take the brig up far--no rocks, shoals, or waterfalls?"

"Nothing of the kind, sir," said the captain. "It's all deep, muddy, sluggish water running through a great forest, and I should say it carries off the drainage of hundreds of miles of country. It must come from the mountains right away yonder, and sometimes there must be tremendous rains to flood the stream, for I remember seeing marks of sand and weeds and dry slime thirty or forty feet up some of the trunks, and I should say that at times the whole country's flooded and we shall have to look out to keep from grounding right away from the river's course."

"You will take care of that," said Sir Humphrey, smiling.

"I shall try, sir," said the captain grimly, "for I don't think you'd like to wake up some morning and find the brig in the middle of a forest, waiting till the next flood-time came."

A week later, after being baffled again and again by adverse winds, Brace and his brother stood upon the deck of the brig one evening just as the wind dropped, as if simultaneously with the descent of the sun like a huge globe of orange fire behind a bank of trees a hundred yards to their left. The river, smooth and gla.s.sy, glowed in reflection from the ruddy sky, the sails flapped, and, no longer answering to her helm, the vessel was beginning slowly to yield to the sluggish current, when there was a rattling sound as the chain cable ran through the hawse-hole, and directly after the anchor took hold in the muddy bottom, the way on the brig was checked, and she swung in mid-stream with her bowsprit pointing out the direction of her future course--a long open waterway between two rapidly-darkening banks of trees whose boughs drooped over and dipped their muddied tips in the stream.

"Will this do, squire?" said the captain.

"Gloriously," said Brace; "but I thought you meant to make fast every night to one of the trees."

"By-and-by, my lad, by-and-by, when there's a handy tree. This would be bad landing for a boat--all one tangle of jungle, and hard to get through. You wanted to get where it was wild: hear that?"

"Yes," said Brace excitedly, as he heard a long-drawn cry from out of the forest, one which was answered from a distance, while the last cry was replied to faintly from still farther away. "What's that--a jaguar?"

"Monkey," said the captain drily, "and that grunting just beginning and rising into a regular boom isn't made by the pumas, for I don't think there'd be any in these great forest-lands."

"What then?" said Brace, in a low voice, as if awe-stricken by the peculiar sounds.

"Frogs, my lad, frogs."

_Quaaak_! A peculiarly loud and strident hollow echoing cry, which was startling in its suddenness and resembled nothing so much as a badly-blown note upon a giant trombone.

"What's that?"

"That?" said the captain, thrusting his hat on one side so as to leave ample room for scratching one ear. "That? Oh, that's a noise I only remember hearing once before, and n.o.body could ever tell me what it was.

There's a lot of queer noises to be heard in the forest of a night, and it always struck me that there are all kinds of wild beasts there such as have never been heard of before and never seen."

"I dessay," said a voice behind them which made them both start round and stare at the speaker, who had been leaning over the bulwark un.o.bserved.

"What's that?" said the captain sharply.

"I said I dessay," replied Briscoe; "but that thing isn't one of them."

"What is it then?" said the captain shortly.

"One of those great long-legged crane things that begin work about this time, fis.h.i.+ng in the swamps for frogs."

"You think the noise was made by a crane?"

"Sure of it, mister," was the reply. "I've sat up before now at the edge of a swamp to shoot them for specimens, and there's several kinds of that sort of bird make a row like that."

"Humph!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the captain gruffly. "You seem to know. Perhaps, then, you'll tell us what made that noise?"

He held up his hand, and all listened to a peculiar whirring sound which began at a distance, came closer and closer till it seemed to pa.s.s from under the trees, swing round the s.h.i.+p, and slowly die away again.

"Ah, that!" said Briscoe quietly. "Sounds like someone letting off a firework with a bang at the end gone damp. No, I don't know what that is. Yes, I do," he added hastily. "That's a big bird too."

"Crane?" said the captain, with an incredulous snort.

"No, sir," said the American: "different thing altogether. It's a night bird that flies round catching beetles and moths--bird something like our 'Whip-poor-Wills' or 'Chuck-Will's-widows.'"

"Bah!" said the captain.

"Yes, that's right," cried Brace: "a bird something like our English night-hawk that sits in the dark parts of the woods and makes a whirring sound; only it isn't half so loud as this."

"Well," said the captain grudgingly, "perhaps you're right. I'm not good at birds. I know a gull or a goose or turkey or chicken. I give in."

The strange whirring sound as of machinery came and went again; but the maker was invisible, and attention was taken from it directly by a loud splash just astern.

"Fis.h.!.+" cried Brace.

"Yes, that's fish," said the captain. "No mistake about that, and you may as well get your tackle to work, squire, for these rivers swarm with 'em, and some of them are good eating. Bit of fish would be a pleasant change if you can supply the cook."

"But it's too dark for fis.h.i.+ng," said Brace.

"Better chance of catching something," said the captain. "But that isn't fish; that's something fis.h.i.+ng."

There was no need for the captain to draw attention to the fact, for those near him were straining their eyes towards the sh.o.r.e, from which a strange beating and splas.h.i.+ng sound arose, but apparently from beyond the black bank of trees formed by the edge of the forest.