me mortial tough, anyhow. Come along, lad, look sharp!”
Without a moment’s hesitation Martin slid over the gunwale into the sea, and, just as the pirate boats grappled with those of the barque, he and Barney found themselves gliding as silently as otters towards the shore. So quietly had the manoeuvre been accomplished, that the men in their own boat were ignorant of their absence. In a few minutes they were beyond the chance of detection.
“Keep close to me, lad,” whispered the Irishman. “If we separate in the darkness we’ll niver foregather again. Catch hould o’ my shoulder if ye get blowed, and splutter as much as ye like. They can’t hear us now, and it’ll help to frighten the sharks.”
“All right,” replied Martin; “I can swim like a cork in such warm water as this. Just go a little slower and I’ll do famously.”
Thus encouraging each other, and keeping close together, lest they should get separated in the thick darkness of the night, the two friends struck out bravely for the shore.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
Martin and Barney get lost in a Great Forest, where they see Strange and Terrible Things.
On gaining the beach, the first thing that Barney did, after shaking himself like a huge Newfoundland dog, was to ascertain that his pistol and cutlass were safe; for, although the former could be of no use in its present condition, still, as he sagaciously remarked, “it was a good thing to have, for they might chance to git powder wan day or other, and the flint would make fire, anyhow.” Fortunately the weather was extremely warm; so they were enabled to take off and wring their clothes without much inconvenience, except that in a short time a few adventurous mosquitoes—probably sea-faring ones—came down out of the woods and attacked their bare bodies so vigorously that they were fain to hurry on their clothes again before they were quite dry.
The clouds began to clear away soon after they landed, and the brilliant light of the southern constellations revealed to them dimly the appearance of the coast. It was a low sandy beach skirting the sea and extending back for about a quarter of a mile in the form of a grassy plain, dotted here and there with scrubby under-wood. Beyond this was a dark line of forest. The light was not sufficient to enable them to ascertain the appearance of the interior. Barney and Martin now cast about in their minds how they were to spend the night.
“Ye see,” said the Irishman, “it’s of no use goin’ to look for houses, because there’s maybe none at all on this coast; an’ there’s no sayin’ but we may fall in with savages—for them parts swarms with them; so we’d better go into the woods an’—”
Barney was interrupted here by a low howl, which proceeded from the woods referred to, and was most unlike any cry they had ever heard before.
“Och but I’ll think better of it. P’raps it’ll be as well not to go into the woods, but to camp where we are.”
“I think so too,” said Martin, searching about for small twigs and drift-wood with which to make a fire. “There is no saying what sort of wild beasts may be in the forest, so we had better wait till daylight.”
A fire was quickly lighted by means of the pistol-flint and a little dry grass, which, when well bruised and put into the pan, caught a spark after one or two attempts, and was soon blown into a flame. But no wood large enough to keep the fire burning for any length of time could be found; so Barney said he would go up to the forest and fetch some. “I’ll lave my shoes and socks, Martin, to dry at the fire. See ye don’t let them burn.”
Traversing the meadow with hasty strides, the bold sailor quickly reached the edge of the forest where he began to lop off several dead branches from the trees with his cutlass. While thus engaged, the howl which had formerly startled him was repeated. “Av I only knowed what ye was,” muttered Barney in a serious tone, “it would be some sort o’ comfort.”
A loud cry of a different kind here interrupted his soliloquy, and soon after the first cry was repeated louder than before.
Clenching his teeth and knitting his brows the perplexed Irishman resumed his work with a desperate resolve not to be again interrupted. But he had miscalculated the strength of his nerves. Albeit as brave a man as ever stepped, when his enemy was before him, Barney was, nevertheless, strongly imbued with superstitious feelings; and the conflict between his physical courage and his mental cowardice produced a species of wild exasperation, which, he often asserted, was very hard to bear. Scarcely had he resumed his work when a bat of enormous size brushed past his nose so noiselessly that it seemed more like a phantom than a reality. Barney had never seen anything of the sort before, and a cold perspiration broke out upon him, when he fancied it might be a ghost. Again the bat swept past close to his eyes.
“Musha, but I’ll kill ye, ghost or no ghost,” he ejaculated, gazing all round into the gloomy depths of the woods with his cutlass uplifted. Instead of flying again in front of him, as he had expected, the bat flew with a whirring noise past his ear. Down came the cutlass with a sudden thwack, cutting deep into the trunk of a small tree, which trembled under the shock and sent a shower of nuts of a large size down upon the sailor’s head. Startled as he was, he sprang backward with a wild cry; then, half ashamed of his groundless fears, he collected the wood he had cut, threw it hastily on his shoulder and went with a quick step out of the woods. In doing so he put his foot upon the head of a small snake, which wriggled up round his ankle and leg. If there was anything on earth that Barney abhorred and dreaded it was a snake. No sooner did he feel its cold form writhing under his foot, than he uttered a tremendous yell of terror, dropped his bundle of sticks, and fled precipitately to the beach, where he did not halt till he found himself knee-deep in the sea.
“Och, Martin, boy,” gasped the affrighted sailor, “it’s my belafe that all the evil spirits on arth live in yonder wood; indeed I do.”
“Nonsense, Barney,” said Martin, laughing; “there are no such things as ghosts; at any rate, I’m resolved to face them, for if we don’t get some sticks the fire will go out and leave us very comfortless. Come, I’ll go up with you.”
“Put on yer shoes then, avic, for the sarpints are no ghosts, anyhow, and I’m tould they’re pisonous sometimes.”
They soon found the bundle of dry sticks that Barney had thrown down, and returning with it to the beach, they speedily kindled a roaring fire, which made them feel quite cheerful. True, they had nothing to eat; but having had a good dinner on board the barque late that afternoon, they were not much in want of food. While they sat thus on the sand of the sea-shore, spreading their hands before the blaze and talking over their strange position, a low rumbling of distant thunder was heard. Barney’s countenance instantly fell.
“What’s the matter, Barney?” inquired Martin, as he observed his companion gaze anxiously up at the sky.
“Och, it’s comin’, sure enough.”
“And what though it does come?” returned Martin; “we can creep under one of these thick bushes till the shower is past.”
“Did ye iver see a thunder-storm in the tropics?” inquired Barney.
“No, never,” replied Martin.
“Then if ye don’t want to feel and see it both at wance, come with me as quick as iver ye can.”
Barney
