h which I heard Miss Belcher inviting Mr.
Goodfellow to pass his plate for another dumpling. Miss Belcher's
voice--as I may or may not have informed the reader--was a baritone
of singularly resonant _timbre_. It sounded through the porthole as
through a speaking trumpet, and I ducked and held my breath as the
boat's gunwale rubbed twice against the schooner's side before
drifting clear.
Once clear, however, I worked my paddle with a will, though
noiselessly; and, the tide helping me, soon reached and rounded the
first bend. Here, out of sight of the ship, I had leisure to draw
breath and look about me.
Ahead of me lay a still reach, close upon half a mile in length, and
narrowing steadily to the next bend, when the two shores overlapped
and mingled their reflections on the water. On my right the red
cliffs, their summits matted with creepers, descended sheer into
water many fathoms deep, yet so clear that I could spy the fish
playing about their bases where they met the firm white sand.
On my left the channel shoaled gradually to a beach of this same
white sand, which followed the curve of the shore, here and again
flashing out into broad sunshine from the blue shadow cast by the
overhanging forest.
Between these banks the breeze could scarcely be felt, yet, though
the sun scorched me, the heat was not oppressive. The woods, dense
and tangled though they were, threw up no exhalations of mud or
rotting leaves, but a clean, aromatic odour. It seemed to give them
a substance without which they had been but a mirage, a scene painted
on a cloth, so motionless and apparently lifeless they stood, with
the long vines hanging from their boughs, and the hot, rarefied air
quivering above them.
At first their silence daunted me; by-and-by I felt (I could hardly
be said to hear) that this silence was intense, and held a sound of
its own, a murmur as of millions of flies and minute winged things--
or perhaps it came from the vegetation itself, and the sap pushing
leaf against leaf and ceaselessly striving for room.
With scarcely more noise than the forest made in growing, I let the
cockboat float up on the tide, correcting her course from time to
time with a touch of the paddle astern; and so coming to the
second bend, began to search the shore for a convenient landing.
The Captain and Mr. Rogers, no doubt, had rowed up to the very head
of the creek, and would by this time be prospecting for the clump of
trees whic
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