For Jacinta by Harold Bindloss

A faint light was creeping into the skipper's room when Austin awakened, and, seeing his comrade's berth unoccupied, went out on deck. The swamps were wrapped in woolly vapour, and a column of dingy smoke went up straight and unwavering from the funnel of the locomotive boiler. The hot land breeze had died away, and it would be some time yet before that from the sea set in. In the meanwhile it was almost cool, and very still; so still, in fact, that Austin was startled when a flock of parrots, invisible in the mist, swept past, screaming, overhead.

Then the sounds of man's activity suddenly commenced, for there was a clatter forward where the Spaniards flung the loose covers from the hatch, and a harsh rattle of chain mingled with the soft patter of their naked feet. In another few moments a sharp, musical clinking broke out, and Austin saw Tom, who had served as a steamer's donkey-man, straighten his bent back when a rush of white vapour whirled with a strident hissing about the locomotive boiler, which now drove the winch. He grinned at Austin, and glanced at the misty creek, far down which a faint screaming was dying away.