While we were laughing at this to our heart's content, Mr Marline came aft to us. "There are a good many dark specks passing and repassing above us in the furthermost reach of the river, yonder, sir--as far as you can see there, sir. Will you please to look at them, Mr Sprawl?" Sprawl took a long squint first, and then handed the glass to me. I peered, and peered. The glorious stream was rolling down like a shining flow of quicksilver; but although all continued quiet in our vicinity, yet, where it narrowed nearly to a bright point in the distance above, I could perceive a tiny dark object slowly descend the river, and send up a thick cloud of smoke, after which it remained stationary, while a number of small black spots were seen cruising hither and thither all around it. Sprawl had also noticed this. "Why, Brail, those gentry seem mustering in some strength. There cannot be many fewer than a hundred canoes paddling about there. What say you?" It was now near three, P.M., and we were bethinking ourselves of going to dinner, when a perfect cloud of the dark specks, fifty at the least, began to drop down with the ebb in a solid phalanx, looking in the distance like a compact black raft of wood. Presently they sheered off right and left; and although the craft from which we had seen the smoke arise, still remained at anchor in the stream, the attendant canoes vanished, one and all, amongst the mangroves, on either bank. "Poo--nonsense!" said Dick Lanyard. "Come along, Sprawl--come along. Why, man, we shall get as thin as whipping-posts, if we allow these barbarian demonstrations to interfere with our comforts." "You may be right, my boy--you may be right," said old Davie; but he appeared to have some strange misgivings. However, we went to dinner; the reefers were all with us, little Joe Peake among the rest, who was now quite recovered from the thump he had got on shore, and old Pumpbolt; and we were in the very middle of it, when down came Wadding, the gunner.--"Beg pardon, sir," said the old seaman, sidling in, and trying to appear at his ease, although he was very far from that same. "Beg pardon--but them chaps are coming more nearer, sir, than seems quite convenient,--they are fast dropping down with the afternoon's ebb, sir." "Indeed!" said old Sprawl, "We must keep a bright look-out here, Brail, at any rate." We went on deck, and the report was literally true; but although the mass above us continued to increase until the whole surface of the river in the distance seemed swarming, as one has seen a pool with those blue water-insects which, I believe, as boys, we used to call sailors, still there was no warlike demonstration made, beyond the occasional descent of a fast-pulling canoe now and then, a mile or so below the main body. But they were always very easily satisfied in their reconnoitring, so far as we could judge, for the whole of them kept a wary distance.