"For my part, I hadn't a doubt but the ship had been watched from shore all along; and there was no saying at present _who_ might be keeping an eye upon her, even if this affair of the French brig weren't to catch us in some deep trick or other. If it were really she, and lying where we caught a glimpse of her the day before, 'twould take three or four hours, at night, even to pull there and back again; but as for her being an ordinary pirate, I had a strong notion she was no such thing, and the stranger I thought the whole matter throughout. "As I peered over the bulwarks into the thick of the tall jungle, the showers of fireflies came here and there flickering out from under the big leaves, lighting up the green of them for a moment, and dancing across a black mouth in the bank nearest us, like emerald sparks. By this time, too, the starlight was growing large out over the dusk, till the whole height of the sky had heaved itself above our upper spars, clear as crystal, and sprinkled full of soft silver points, that gathered and got brighter as you looked. One could see the whole breadth of the river floating slowly between, with lazy brown swirls of current twisting and curling round the point, and the eddies rising in the middle, to where the water glistened among the dark wet mangrove stems, or some oily swell near the edge went lipping in with the gleam of a star lengthened upon it. Hot and close though the night still was, while the rank smell of the mud came at times into our nostrils from one side, and of growing leaves from the other, yet it was pleasant enough after being shut up for ever so many hours in a dark hole below. "Neither did I think there was any fear of trouble from the natives while this lasted; but the haze that seemed to be oozing out over the mass of woods, with now and then a cool breath of air from up-river, showed what a fog we might expect as soon as the land-wind began to blow strong from inland. Sometimes I fancied I heard cries in the distance among the woods, over the croaking of the frogs which seemed to get up as one listened; then again I could make out the hollow booming of the African tree-drum, with a chorus of horns and savage-like shouts, apparently filling up every break in the hum that rose off the ground--far enough away, however, to satisfy me the blacks were only making merry before turning in.