The canoe was now approaching the land. The bay opened out, and a gap in the white surf of the reef marked where the little river ran out to the sea; the thicker and deeper green of the virgin forest showed its course down the distant hill-slope. The forest here came close to the beach. Far beyond, dim and almost cloudlike in texture, rose the mountains, like suddenly frozen waves. The sea was still save for an almost imperceptible swell. The sky blazed. The man with the carved paddle stopped. “It should be somewhere here,” he said. He shipped the paddle and held his arms out straight before him. The other man had been in the fore part of the canoe, closely scrutinising the land. He had a sheet of yellow paper on his knee. “Come and look at this, Evans,” he said. Both men spoke in low tones, and their lips were hard and dry. The man called Evans came swaying along the canoe until he could look over his companion’s shoulder. The paper had the appearance of a rough map. By much folding it was creased and worn to the pitch of separation, and the second man held the discoloured fragments together where they had parted. On it one could dimly make out, in almost obliterated pencil, the outline of the bay. “Here,” said Evans, “is the reef and here is the gap.” He ran his thumb-nail over the chart. “This curved and twisting line is the river—I could do with a drink now!—and this star is the place.” “You see this dotted line,” said the man with the map; “it is a straight line, and runs from the opening of the reef to a clump of palm-trees. The star comes just where it cuts the river. We must mark the place as we go into the lagoon.” “It’s queer,” said Evans, after a pause, “what these little marks down here are for. It looks like the plan of a house or something; but what all these little dashes, pointing this way and that, may mean I can’t get a notion. And what’s the writing?” “Chinese,” said the man with the map. “Of course! _He_ was a Chinee,” said Evans. “They all were,” said the man with the map. They both sat for some minutes staring at the land, while the canoe drifted slowly. Then Evans looked towards the paddle. “Your turn with the paddle now, Hooker,” said he. And his companion quietly folded up his map, put it in his pocket, passed Evans carefully, and began to paddle. His movements were languid, like those of a man whose strength was nearly exhausted.