The Black Bar | Page 4

lieutenant; "back water, my lads! We are doing no good here. It is impossible to see where we are going."
There was a slight splashing, and the boats began to descend the stream, swept along by the tide for a time, till they lay on their oars again.
"What's that, Mr Russell?" whispered Mark, all at once.
"What? I heard nothing but one of the oars badly muffled."
"I didn't near anything. I meant what's that I can smell?"
The lieutenant started, and just then there was a peculiarly offensive, sickening odour perceptible.
"No mistaking that," whispered the lieutenant; and, giving orders, a lantern was taken from beneath the sail, and shown above the gunwale of the boat.
Almost immediately a faint star-like light shone out at a distance on their left, and the lantern was hidden and the star disappeared.
"Why's that?" whispered Mark.
"Let the other boat know the slaver's dropping down," was whispered back.
"But is she?" said Mark, excitedly.
"No doubt about that, my lad. Pull steady."
The men obeyed, and the boat was steered in a zigzag fashion down the river, but there was no sign of the slaver. If she was dropping down it was so silently that her presence was not detected, and at last a fresher feeling in the air warned the occupants of the first cutter that they must be nearing the mouth of the river.
"Light," whispered Mark, pointing off to his right, where, faintly seen, there was a feeble ray.
"Signal," whispered the lieutenant. The lantern was shown, and there was an answering light from behind them, proving that the one forward must be at sea.
"It's a recall," said the lieutenant, with a sigh of relief; "give way, my lads." Then to Mark: "The captain must be uneasy about us, or he would never show that light. It's like letting the slaver know. Bah! what an idiot I am. That's not our light. Pull, my lads, pull! That must have been shown by the ship we are after."
As he spoke the light disappeared, and a fresh one appeared from astern.
They showed their own lantern, and their signal was answered, the second cutter running up close to them a few minutes later, while the lieutenant was boiling over with impatience, for he had been compelled to check his own boat's way.
"What is it?" he said to his second in command.
"See that light ashore, sir?"
"No; I saw one out at sea; it's the slaver. Follow us at once."
"But that light was ashore, sir."
"Mr Ramsay, do you think I'm blind? Mr Howlett, are you there?"
"Yes, sir."
"Didn't you see a light off to sea?"
"No, sir; ashore."
"I tell you it was at sea, and it is the craft we are after. Now, my lads, give way."
Crash.
"Why, we're among the trees again."
"Yes, sir; shore's this way," said the coxswain.
"Then where in the name of wonder is the sea?" said the lieutenant, in an angry whisper, as the tide bore them along, with the men's oars rattling among the mangrove stems.
"I think we've got into a side channel," said Mark.
"Rubbish! How could we?"
"Beg pardon, Mr Russell, sir," came from the boat astern; "we've got into a sort of canal place with the tide running like a mill stream. Hadn't we better lie to till daybreak?"
"Better sink ourselves," growled the lieutenant. "Here are we regularly caught in a maze, and that schooner getting comfortably away to sea."
"'Fraid so, sir," said the boatswain. "That there was a light showed ashore to warn 'em that we were in the river; some of 'em must have heard."
The lieutenant made no answer, but ordered the men to back water, and for the next four hours they were fighting the swift river, trying to extricate themselves from the muddy system of branches into which they had been carried in the darkness, but in vain; and at last, in despair, they made fast to the mangroves, and waited for day.
Light came at last, piercing the white fog in which they lay; and in a short time they were back in the wide river, close to the sea, dejected, weary, and wondering that they could have been so confused in the darkness.
"Nice wigging we shall have, Vandean," said the lieutenant; "the skipper will sarcastically tell me he had better have sent one of the ship's boys in command. But there, I did my best. Ugh! how chilly it feels!"
An hour later they were alongside the Nautilus, which lay at the edge of a bank of mist which covered the sea, while shoreward all was now growing clear from a gentle breeze springing up.
The lieutenant was a true prophet, for the captain almost used his officer's words.
"Then you haven't seen a sign of the schooner?"
"No, sir; but we smelt it."
"What!" cried the captain.
"Sail ho!" shouted the man at the look-out, and in a moment all was excitement, for, about