Explore "The Crystal Sceptre" by Philip Verrill Mighels on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
HAD THE Blacks known the country and human ways of cunning, they could still have cut across the neck of a loop in the river, and so have overtaken the boat, but this was beyond their sagacity. I feared they might have forestalled us thus, so that when we came along to where they should have been, in such an event, I was alert for trouble and hugged the further side of the stream. Of course we passed the place unmolested.
The sun was shining brightly now, as if in promise of fairer things to come. We had been too horrified to speak, but at last we breathed our relief, and shuddered as we reviewed the fearful hour which, thank God, was now of the past. Then we ate of our food, for all were faint from hunger, and I stirred up and fed the fire, and laid out the bombs to dry in the tropical heat. Also I moored the boat from the branch of an overhanging tree, by means of the rope I had taken along. I needed rest as much as food.