purposely got separated from the others, as I wanted to wait and conceal myself, to see how many blacks were tracking us but I suddenly emerged into a clear space with a circle of their gunyahs with the fires still there. Seeing no one I walked into it. I think that by suddenly turning back we had somehow eluded them for the time being.
I examined the whole place, looked into every gunyah, and in one I stuck conspicuously my visiting card, thinking it only polite!
I joined the others lower down, and we at last got back to the shore and saw the boat out at anchor, and just then the sailor fired and the Captain pointed out the far-away smoke of the China boat. We hurried down, plunged out through the water to the boat, which was brought nearer to meet us, and then began hallooing for the others. The wand and snake were thrown down in the bottom, and the basket and an enormous pile of orchids and other plants on top of it.
The Captain got impatient, for it was necessary that he should be back ere the China boat reached ours for the trans-shipment of mails, and he wanted to go and leave the two officers to find their way back overland to Cooktown, a long distance; but begged for delay, and luckily they soon appeared, and, grasping the situation, slipped off their boots and trousers and came out to us as quickly as they could. They scrambled into the boat, plump in amidst our heap of orchids, and as their bare feet and legs sunk through and came amidst the slimy, moving coils of the snake there were loud yells! This quite restored us all, and we enjoyed their consternation. They, too, had been tracked by blacks—they, however, were armed, we were not—and one of them had struck the black's encampment where I had been, and found my card, which he took, and long after this showed me carefully
