n unfrequented part of the coast; and I had heard some
rather gruesome stories as to the doings of the natives, and of the
treatment that they were wont to mete out to white men--shipwrecked
sailors and others--who happened to be so unfortunate as to fall into
their hands. And as the hours drifted past without bringing any news, I
at length grew so anxious that I began to consider very seriously the
advisability of sending away a boat in search of the missing men. After
fully discussing the matter with Carter, however, I came to the
conclusion that our first duty was to take care of the ship and her
passengers, and that the mutinous crew must be left to look after
themselves. Finally, having set a strong anchor-watch, I went below and
turned in.

Daylight arrived, noon came, and still there was no sign of the
absentees, and in a fever of anxiety I made my way up to the fore-royal-
yard, from which lofty elevation I made a careful survey of the inland
district. But there was very little to see beyond a two-mile stretch of
a broad, winding river dotted with tree-grown islets here and there.
The country itself was so densely overgrown with bush and trees that
nothing upon its surface was to be seen. As to the longboat, she was
nowhere visible; but I was not much astonished at that, because, from
the glimpse that I was able to catch of the river, I had very little
doubt that its characteristics were precisely those of all the other
rivers in that region, namely, a somewhat sluggish current of water
thick with foul and fetid mud, swampy margins overgrown with mangroves,
and numerous shallow, winding creeks, mangrove-bordered, discharging
into it on either side; and it was highly probable that, failing to find
a firm bank upon which to land along the margin of the river itself, the
mutineers had proceeded in search of such a spot up one of the creeks.
There were no canoes to be seen on that part of the river's surface
which was visible from my look-out, and the only suggestion of human
life anywhere in the neighbourhood was to be found in what I took to be
a thin, almost invisible, wreath of smoke rising above the tree tops at
a spot some two miles distant. That wreath of smoke might, of course,
indicate the position of the mutineers' bivouac; but, on the other hand,
it might--and I thought this far more likely--indicate the location of a
native village; and if the latter suspicion should prove to be correct I
could not