Thus coming to it, our hero could see that it was a large yawl-boat manned by half a score of black men for rowers, and that there were two lanterns in the stern-sheets, and three or four shovels.

The man who had conducted the conversation with Barnaby True for all this time, and who was, as has been said, plainly the captain of the expedition, stepped immediately down into the boat; our hero followed, and the others followed after him; and instantly they were seated the boat shoved off and the black men began pulling straight out into the harbor, and so, at some distance away, around under the stern of the man-of-war.

Not a word was spoken after they had thus left the shore, and they might all have been so many spirits for the silence of the party.  Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts to talk (and serious enough thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to trepan a man at every turn, and press-gangs to carry him off so that he might never be heard of again).  As for the others, they did not seem to choose to say anything now that they had been fairly embarked upon their enterprise, and so the crew pulled away for the best part of an hour, the leader of the expedition directing the course of the boat straight across the harbor, as though towards the mouth of the Cobra River.  Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby could after a while see for himself, by the low point of land with a great, long row of cocoanut-palms growing upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well), which by-and-by began to loom up from the dimness of the moonlight.  As they approached the river they found the tide was running very violently, so that it gurgled and rippled alongside the boat as the crew of black men pulled strongly against it.  Thus rowing slowly against the stream they came around what appeared to be either a point of land or an islet covered with a thick growth of mangrove-trees; though still no one spoke a single word as to their destination, or what was the business they had in hand.

The night, now that they had come close to the shore, appeared to be full of the noises of running tide-water, and the air was heavy with the smell of mud and marsh.  And over all was the whiteness of the moonlight, with a few stars pricking out here and there in the sky; and everything was so strange and mysterious and so different from anything that he had experienced before that Barnaby could not divest himself of the feeling that it was all a dream from which at any moment he might awaken.  As for the town and the Ordinary he had quitted such a short time before, so different were they from this present experience, it was as though they might have concerned another life than that which he was then enjoying.

Meantime, the rowers bending to the oars, the boat drew slowly around into the open water once more.  As it did so the leader of the expedition of a sudden called out in a loud, commanding voice, whereat the black men instantly ceased rowing and lay on their oars, the boat drifting onward into the night.