Toward the end of our journeying by boat, after we had passed two cliffs upreared above the water, the higher rising sheer for two hundred feet, we perceived to the northward vast chains of hills rising in dull brown ridges against the sky-line, seemingly crowned with rare forest growth to their very summits.

During all these days and nights in only two things could we deem ourselves fortunate--we discovered no signs of roving savages, while wild animals were sufficiently numerous to supply all our needs.
Three days' journey beyond the great cliff--for we voyaged now during the daylight, making camp at nightfall--I became convinced of the utter futility of further effort.

By this time I had recovered sufficiently from my wound to assume a share of labor at the oars, and was pulling that afternoon, so my eyes could glance past the fiery red crop of the Puritan, who held the after-oar, to where the Captain and Madame rested in the stern.

I remarked De Noyan's dissatisfied stare along the featureless shore we skirted, and the lines of care and trouble becoming daily more manifest upon Madame's face.

Thus studying the two, I cast about in my own mind for some possible plan of escape.
They had been conversing together in low tones, so low, indeed, no words reached me, while the preacher knew nothing of the language employed.