to the boat that lay plainly awaiting
their coming at the bottom of the garden.

Thus coming to it, our hero could see that it was a large yawl-boat
manned by half a score of black men for rowers, and that there were two
lanterns in the stern-sheets, and three or four shovels.

The man who had conducted the conversation with Barnaby True for all
this time, and who was, as has been said, plainly the captain of the
expedition, stepped immediately down into the boat; our hero followed,
and the others followed after him; and instantly they were seated the
boat shoved off and the black men began pulling straight out into the
harbor, and so, at some distance away, around under the stern of the
man-of-war.

Not a word was spoken after they had thus left the shore, and they
might all have been so many spirits for the silence of the party.
Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts to talk (and serious
enough thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to trepan a man at
every turn, and press-gangs to carry him off so that he might never be
heard of again). As for the others, they did not seem to choose to say
anything now that they had been fairly embarked upon their enterprise,
and so the crew pulled away for the best part of an hour, the leader of
the expedition directing the course of the boat straight across the
harbor, as though towards the mouth of the Cobra River. Indeed, this
was their destination, as Barnaby could after a while see for himself,
by the low point of land with a great, long row of cocoanut-palms
growing upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well), which
by-and-by began to loom up from the dimness of the moonlight. As they
approached the river they found the tide was running very violently, so
that it gurgled and rippled alongside the boat as the crew of black men
pulled strongly against it. Thus rowing slowly against the stream they
came around what appeared to be either a point of land or an islet
covered with a thick growth of mangrove-trees; though still no one
spoke a single word as to their destination, or what was the business
they had in hand.

The night, now that they had come close to the shore, appeared to be
full of the noises of running tide-water, and the air was heavy with
the smell of mud and marsh. And over all was the whiteness of the
moonlight, with a few stars pricking out here and there in the sky; and
everything was so strange and mysterious and so different from anyt