en unable to pass the mud bar at the
entrance of the river.

The course of the stream which they were now following was,
approximately, north-north-east, for a distance of about twenty-two
miles, which was traversed in a trifle over four hours. Here the river
suddenly bent sharply round in a south-easterly direction; the mangroves
disappeared, being replaced by a thick fringe of reeds, the banks of the
river gradually increased in height, and were covered to the water's
edge with a thick tangle of bushes, amid which towered the outposts of a
forest of magnificent trees that could be seen stretching away for miles
ahead. The fugitives considered that they were now well beyond all
likelihood of pursuit, and the thick beds of reeds which fringed the
river at frequent intervals afforded them excellent opportunities for
concealment; but the wind continued favourable, and the moon afforded
them ample light; they therefore determined to press forward so long as
the conditions continued favourable, one of them remaining on watch and
steering the boat while the other slept.

In this fashion they sped up the stream hour after hour, all through the
night, the width of the waterway remaining about the same, but the
character of the country ever-changing, the banks in places rising to a
height of quite a hundred feet, here in the form of a gentle, tree-clad
slope, and there towering precipitously, a rocky face, with overhanging
bushes and great clumps of fern springing from every fissure. At length
the moon sank beneath the tree-tops on the western bank, and the light
became so uncertain that the voyagers were seriously debating the
advisability of seeking a suitable spot in which to tie up the boat,
when a sudden chilliness in the wind warned them that the dawn was at
hand, and a few minutes later the sky to the eastward paled, so that the
tops of the trees stood out against the pallor black as though drawn in
Indian ink, the stars dimmed and blinked out, one after another, the
eastern pallor became suffused with delicate primrose that rapidly
warmed into clear amber, a beam of golden light flashed through the
branches of the trees on the eastern bank of the river, and in a moment
the whole scene changed as if by magic, a thousand lovely tints of
green, blue, orange, crimson, and white, leapt into view as daylight
flooded the landscape, revealing great masses of flowering shrubs and
enormous festoons of queer-shaped and gorgeou