The morning sun found the young people preparing to carry their resolution into effect. When Harold opened the oven the turkey was baked brown as a nut, and from the now tepid hole arose an odour, so tempting, that their appetites began to clamour for an enjoyment that was not long delayed.
After breakfast the first work to be done was packing the boat, during which time Harold, at the suggestion of Robert, took Frank, and made a short tour through the surrounding forest, for the purpose of obtaining a breakfast for the dogs. The bark of the dogs and crack of a rifle soon announced that the hunters were successful, and in less than half an hour they returned each with a rabbit, as we Americans call the hare. "See here, brother Robert! See here, sister Mary!" was the merry chatter of Frank, the moment he came near. "I caught this myself. Fidelle ran it into a hollow tree--he is a fine rabbit dog. Mum is good for nothing; he will not run rabbits at all, but just stood and looked at us while Fidelle was after it. Cousin Harold would not let me smoke out the rabbit, but showed me how to get it with a switch. Isn't it a nice fellow?"
"It is indeed," replied Robert, "and I think that before we can return home, you will make an excellent _supercargo_."
Scarcely a smile followed this allusion; it was too sadly associated with the painful events of their forced departure from home. The packing completed, they called in the dogs and goats, pushed from shore, raised their sails to a favourable breeze, and moved gaily up the river.
For a mile and a half the water over which they sailed, lay in a straight reach, due east and west, then turned rapidly round to the north, where its course could be traced for many a mile by the breaks among the mangroves. Just where the river made its turn to the north, a small creek opened into it from the south. The course of this creek was very serpentine; for a considerable distance hugging the shore in a close embrace, then running off for a quarter or half a mile, and after enclosing many hundred acres of marsh, returning to the land, within a stone's throw of the place which it had left.
As the object of the voyagers was to explore the land, they turned into this creek, which seemed to form the eastern boundary of the island. They observed that the vegetation which was very scant and small near the sea, increased rapidly in variety and luxuriance as they proceeded inland. Tall palmettoes, pines, hickories, oaks, tulip trees, magnolias, gums, bays, and cypresses, reared aloft their gigantic forms, their bases being concealed by myrtles, scarlet berried cascenas, dwarf palmettoes, gallberries, and other bushes, intermingled with bowers of yellow jessamine, grape-vine, and chainy brier; while a rich grass, dotted with variously coloured flowers, spread like a gorgeous carpet beneath the magnificent canopy. Some of the flowers that glistened, even at this late season, above the floor of this great Gothic temple, were strikingly beautiful.