and there await your next appearance,
when we would signal you. We had already detected a little stream
flowing down the hill-side and discharging into the channel, quite near
the spot where we decided to await your reappearance, so we followed it
down to the water's edge, where we camped. Then that same evening your
boat again hove in sight, and we saw you land a party of niggers just
opposite where we were watching; having done which you again made sail
to the northward and eastward; which led us to the conclusion that after
all you had not settled upon that cultivated island--as we had at first
supposed--but somewhere else. Of course we showed ourselves upon the
beach, and hailed; but the channel was too wide for our voices to carry
across, and probably you never looked in our direction, so we failed to
attract your attention. But we knew now that you were still on the
group, and that we were on your track; so we did not trouble overmuch.

"Then, before your boat had passed out of sight, and while we were still
watching, we saw a nigger paddling across the channel from the island
you had touched at to the one that we were upon. He was heading to land
at a spot rather more than a mile to the eastward of where we were, so
we got back into the young growth that had sprung up after the fire, and
pushed along toward the spot for which he was making. We arrived a few
minutes before he did and, crouching down, we saw him haul up his tub of
a canoe on the beach, and make his way inland. We allowed him to get
well away from the beach, and then we crept down to the canoe, launched
her, and proceeded to paddle in the track of your boat.

"It fell dark almost before we had got fairly under way, but there was a
fine moon, so it did not greatly matter. We paddled down the channel
and across it to the point round which you had recently vanished--a good
eight miles we reckoned it to be--and hot work it was for two men who
had been on short commons for more than a month; but we forgot all about
that when, upon rounding the point, we saw, at a distance of not more
than five or six miles, a _light_; and we knew that now you could not be
very far away, while we were in possession of the means to reach you.
But it was a tough job to get that little tub of the nigger's along when
once we had rounded the point, for at once we felt the full strength of
the easterly breeze, and it and the popple it raised were together just
as much a