, as it slowly
heaved up and sank with the long ground swell, the light flashing from
the surface attacking the eyes with blinding power, bronzing the faces
of some, peeling the noses of others.

Setting aside the smart crew of the cutter in their white duck shirts
and trousers and straw hats, with faces, necks, and hands of a mahogany
brown, the two speakers may be taken as fair samples of what the sun
could do with a fresh-coloured English lad of sixteen or seventeen.
Mark Vandean, who leaned back and had wrenched himself round to sharply
adjure something behind him in the bottom of the boat, was burned of a
good warm Russian leather brown, while his companion, Bob Howlett, who
held the rudder-lines, displayed in addition to ruddy brown cheeks a
nose in a most disreputable state of rag.

The boat went swiftly through the water, as the men bent with regular
stroke, and made the tough ash blades of their oars curve ere they rose
and scattered the flashing drops, which seemed to brighten the scene
where all was flat and monotonous, and the view contracted by a dead
silvery haze of heat. Behind them was the low flat shore with a few
scattered white houses and factories behind a rough landing-stage.
There were palms of different kinds in a straggling line, and on either
side of the opening out of a muddy river, a bordering of dingy green
mangroves--tree cripples, Mark Vandean called them, because they all
looked as if standing up on crutches. A few boats lay in the mouth of
the river, a dissolute-looking brig with its yards unsquared was at
anchor higher up, and a sharp eye could detect a figure or two about the
beach. On either side, as far as eye could reach, there was a line of
surf.

That was all shoreward, while out to sea, a couple of miles or so away,
smart and business-like, with her tall spars and carefully squared yards
and rigging, cobweb-like in texture at that distance, lay at anchor in
the open road-stead HMS _Nautilus_ waiting to gather "blackberries" at
the first opportunity, and toward which smart little vessel the cutter
was being steadily propelled.

The object ordered to lie still under pain of being pitched overboard
did not lie, but crouched a little lower, and increased the wrinkles in
its deeply lined forehead, above which was a thin fringe of hair,
blinked its wondering eyes, and looked piteously at the speaker.

It was the face of an old man with enormous mouth pinched together, and
devoi