, with leaves like cymbal-shaped plates of
green metal; gum-elemi trees, with trunks of glistening bronze; and
seven-year apples, with fruit like painted wood.

Here and there was a thatch-palm, stunted, and looking like the
head-dress of some savage African warrior. Inland, the creek, all white
sand and golden sunny water at its opening, spread out far and near into
noisome swamps overgrown with mangroves. Those strangest of all trees,
that had something tender and idyllic as they stepped out into the
ripple with their fresh child-like laurel-line leaves and dangling rods
of emerald, that were really the suckers of their banyan-like roots, had
grown into an obscene and bizarre maturity, like nightmares striding out
in every direction with skeleton feet planted in festering mud, and
stretching out horned, clawing hands that seemed to take root as one
looked, and to throw out other roots of horror like a dream.

Twilight was beginning to add to its suggestions of _diablerie,_ and
the whole land to seem more and more the abode of devils.

"Come along, Tom, I can't stand any more of this. We'll have to leave
our funerals till to-morrow, and get aboard for the night"--for the
_Maggie Darling_ was still floating there serenely, as though men and
their violence had no existence on the planet.

"We'd better cover them up, against the turkey-buzzards," said Tom, two
of those unsavory birds rising in the air as we returned to the shore.
We did this as well as we were able with rocks and the wreckage of an
old boat strewn on the beach, and, before we rowed aboard--Tom, and
Sailor, and I--we managed to shoot a couple of them,--_pour encourager
les autres._

I don't think two men were ever so glad of the morning, driving before
it the haunted night, as Tom and I; and Sailor seemed as glad as
ourselves, for he too seemed to have been troubled by bad dreams, and
woke me more than once, growling and moaning in his sleep in a
frightened way.

After breakfast, our first thought was naturally to the sad and
disagreeable business before us.

"I tell you what I've been thinking, sar," said Tom, as we rowed ashore,
and I managed to pull down a turkey-buzzard that rose at our
approach--happily our coverings had proved fairly effective--"I've been
thinking that the only one of the three that really matters is the
captain, and we can find sufficient soil for him in one of those big
holes."

"How about the others?"

"Why, to tell th