Sons of Fire! Were they not worthy of the name, these white men, when far out in midstream, while the boatmen bent and cowered over their paddles, these Englishmen looked in the face of the lightning and sat calm and unmoved while day darkened to the pitchy blackness of a starless midnight, and the thunder reverberated from hill to hill, with roar upon roar and peal upon peal, like the booming of heavy batteries, and anon crashed and rattled with a sharper, nearer sound. Blinding lightning, torrential rain, war of thunder and tempestuous waters, were all as nothing to these sons of fire. Their spirits rose amidst hurricane or thunderstorm; they were full of life and gaiety while the cockleshell canoes were being tossed upon the short, choppy sea, like forest leaves upon a forest brook, and when every sudden gust threatened destruction. They laughed at peril, and insisted upon having the canoes out when their native followers saw danger riding on the wind and death brooding over the waters. They met the spirit of murder, and were not afraid. They lay down to sleep in the midst of an unknown wilderness, with savage beasts lurking in the darkness that surrounded their tents. They forded rivers that swarmed with crocodiles--horrible stealthy creatures, swimming deep down below the surface of the water, the placid, beautiful water, with lotus flowers sleeping in the sunlight, and scaly monsters waiting underneath in the shadow. Panther, crocodile, tempest, fever, or sunstroke, poisoned arrows from murderous foes, were only so many varieties in the story of adventure. Through every vicissitude the ready wit and calm courage of the Englishmen rose superior to accident, discomfort, or danger; and to the native temper these wanderers from a far country, an island which they had heard of as a speck in a narrow sea, seemed men of iron with souls of fire. Geoffrey would admit no malingering, would accept no idle pretexts for inaction or delay. His little band, picked out from the ruck of their porters, were always on the move, save in those rainy interludes which made movement impossible; and even then Geoffrey fretted and fumed, and was inclined to question the impracticability of a hunting expedition through those torrential rains. "Did you ever hear of a fox-hunter stopping at home because of a wet day?" he asked Cecil Patrington, impatiently. "Did you ever see such rain as this in a fox-hunting country?" retorted Patrington, pointing through an opening in the door of the hut to the sheet of falling water, which blotted out all beyond, and splashed with a thud into the pool that filled the enclosure. The deep eaves kept the rain out of the huts, but not without occasional accident--spoilt provisions, damp gunpowder. It was a rude awakening from dreams of home to find one's bed afloat on a pond of rising waters.