as to properly overhaul the ground, but not keeping too far apart
to be out of hail of one another lest we might get lost, we dispersed
through the bush--I taking the beach line for my course, and telling the
rest to keep the two cocoa-nut trees in sight for a general rendezvous
and report progress in an hour's time or thereabouts if they had not
found water before. If they found it, of course they were to sing out
at once.

"Our courage was pretty well up then, for we had yet only seen the
beginning, so to speak, of our trials, and the men went off laughing and
skylarking; one calling out as how he'd soon be piping us down to a real
good feed, with lashings of grog; and another saying he'd look in and
ask the Queen of Madagascar to send down a carriage and fetch us to the
palace. Bless you! you know what light-hearted chaps sailors are, even
in the midst of danger. As for myself, I was more serious like; for,
besides having the responsibility of the whole party on my shoulders and
wishing to do the best for all, I couldn't help thinking we were in a
very sorry mess altogether. I knew what the coast was, you see; for it
was a wide extent of savage country all the way from Cape Tangan to
Majunga, with only some little native settlement here and there between,
all of which were separated by this endless belt of jungle I've
mentioned, and wide lagoons and rivers, in addition to high mountains in
many places--that would have been tough climbing at the best of times,
without the heavy brushwood and tangled thickets that ran up from their
bases to their summits, and the deep crevices and gorges in which they
abruptly ended, making one come to a dead stop on the edge of some awful
abyss, over which one step further would precipitate you. I knew all
this, sir, from my own past acquaintance with the coast, as well as from
what I had learned from others who had seen more of it than I had; so, I
did not see quite such a satisfactory end to our difficulties as all the
rest did, with the exception of Magellan, who had been shipwrecked
before, on the coast of China, and knew it wasn't child's play. But, as
for the other poor fellows, they had to learn the reality in bitter
earnestness. Now that they had succeeded in getting ashore such
distance from where the pinnace had sunk under us, they believed they
had passed through the worst peril they could possibly have to contend
against and that thenceforth all was plain sailing fo