“Better stay here, and be drowned.”

“You’re right in that last,” shouts Cary.  “That’s the right death for blind puppies.  Look you!  I don’t know in the least where we are, and I hardly know stem from stern aboard ship; and the captain may be right or wrong—­that’s nothing to me; but this I know, that I am a soldier, and will obey orders; and where he goes, I go; and whosoever hinders me must walk up my sword to do it.”

Amyas pressed Cary’s hand, and then—­

“And here’s my broadside next, men.  I’ll go nowhere, and do nothing without the advice of Salvation Yeo and Robert Drew; and if any man in the ship knows better than these two, let him up, and we’ll give him a hearing.  Eh, Pelicans?”

There was a grunt of approbation from the Pelicans; and Amyas returned to the charge.

“We have five shot between wind and water, and one somewhere below.  Can we face a gale of wind in that state, or can we not?”

Silence.

“Can we get home with a leak in our bottom?”

Silence.

“Then what can we do but run inshore, and take our chance?  Speak!  It’s a coward’s trick to do nothing because what we must do is not pleasant.  Will you be like children, that would sooner die than take nasty physic, or will you not?”

Silence still.

“Come along now!  Here’s the wind again round with the sun, and up to the north-west.  In with her!”

Sulkily enough, but unable to deny the necessity, the men set to work, and the vessel’s head was put toward the land; but when she began to slip through the water, the leak increased so fast, that they were kept hard at work at the pumps for the rest of the afternoon.

The current had by this time brought them abreast of the bay of Higuerote; and, luckily for them, safe out of the short heavy swell which it causes round Cape Codera.  Looking inland, they had now to the south-west that noble headland, backed by the Caracas Mountains, range on range, up to the Silla and the Neguater; while, right ahead of them to the south, the shore sank suddenly into a low line of mangrove-wood, backed by primaeval forest.  As they ran inward, all eyes were strained greedily to find some opening in the mangrove belt; but none was to be seen for some time.  The lead was kept going; and every fresh heave announced shallower water.

“We shall have very shoal work off those mangroves, Yeo,” said Amyas; “I doubt whether we shall do aught now, unless we find a river’s mouth.”

“If the Lord thinks a river good for us, sir, He’ll show us one.”  So on they went, keeping a south-east course, and at last an opening in the mangrove belt was hailed with a cheer from the older hands, though the majority shrugged their shoulders, as men going open-eyed to destruction.

Off the mouth they sent in Drew and Cary with a boat, and watched anxiously for an hour.  The boat returned with a good report of two fathoms of water over the bar, impenetrable forests for two miles up, the river sixty yards broad, and no sign of man.  The river’s banks were soft and sloping mud, fit for careening.