"We shall have very shoal work off those mangroves, Yeo," said Amyas; "I doubt whether we shall do aught now, unless we find a river's mouth.""If the Lord thinks a river good for us, sir, He'll show us one."So on they went, keeping a south-east course, and at last an opening in the mangrove belt was hailed with a cheer from the older hands, though the majority shrugged their shoulders, as men going open-eyed to destruction.
Off the mouth they sent in Drew and Cary with a boat, and watched anxiously for an hour.The boat returned with a good report of two fathoms of water over the bar, impenetrable forests for two miles up, the river sixty yards broad, and no sign of man.The river's banks were soft and sloping mud, fit for careening.
"Safe quarters, sir," said Yeo, privately, "as far as Spaniards go.
I hope in God it may be as safe from calentures and fevers.""Beggars must not be choosers," said Amyas.So in they went.
They towed the ship up about half-a-mile to a point where she could not be seen from the seaward; and there moored her to the mangrove-stems.Amyas ordered a boat out, and went up the river himself to reconnoitre.He rowed some three miles, till the river narrowed suddenly, and was all but covered in by the interlacing boughs of mighty trees.There was no sign that man had been there since the making of the world.
He dropped down the stream again, thoughtfully and sadly.How many years ago was it that he passed this river's mouth? Three days.
And yet how much had passed in them! Don Guzman found and lost--Rose found and lost--a great victory gained, and yet lost--perhaps his ship lost--above all, his brother lost.
Lost! O God, how should he find his brother?
Some strange bird out of the woods made mournful answer--"Never, never, never!"How should he face his mother?
"Never, never, never!" wailed the bird again; and Amyas smiled bitterly, and said "Never!" likewise.
The night mist began to steam and wreathe upon the foul beer-colored stream.The loathy floor of liquid mud lay bare beneath the mangrove forest.Upon the endless web of interarching roots great purple crabs were crawling up and down.They would have supped with pleasure upon Amyas's corpse; perhaps they might sup on him after all; for a heavy sickening graveyard smell made his heart sink within him, and his stomach heave; and his weary body, and more weary soul, gave themselves up helplessly to the depressing influence of that doleful place.The black bank of dingy leathern leaves above his head, the endless labyrinth of stems and withes (for every bough had lowered its own living cord, to take fresh hold of the foul soil below); the web of roots, which stretched away inland till it was lost in the shades of evening--all seemed one horrid complicated trap for him and his; and even where, here and there, he passed the mouth of a lagoon, there was no opening, no relief--nothing but the dark ring of mangroves, and here and there an isolated group of large and small, parents and children, breeding and spreading, as if in hideous haste to choke out air and sky.Wailing sadly, sad-colored mangrove-hens ran off across the mud into the dreary dark.The hoarse night-raven, hid among the roots, startled the voyagers with a sudden shout, and then all was again silent as a grave.The loathly alligators, lounging in the slime, lifted their horny eyelids lazily, and leered upon him as he passed with stupid savageness.Lines of tall herons stood dimly in the growing gloom, like white fantastic ghosts, watching the passage of the doomed boat.All was foul, sullen, weird as witches' dream.If Amyas had seen a crew of skeletons glide down the stream behind him, with Satan standing at the helm, he would have scarcely been surprised.What fitter craft could haunt that Stygian flood?
That night every man of the boat's crew, save Amyas, was down with raging fever; before ten the next morning, five more men were taken, and others sickening fast.