When all was quiet again, one of the men, who could speak a little Malay, came to me and begged me not to sleep too hard.

"Why ?" said I."Perhaps the pirates may really come," said he very seriously, which made me laugh and assure him I should sleep as hard as I could.
Two days were spent here, but the place was unproductive of insects or birds of interest, so we made another attempt to get on.

As soon as we got a little away from the land we had a fair wind, and in six hours' sailing reached the entrance of the Watelai channel, which divides the most northerly from the middle portion of Aru.

At its mouth this was about half a mile wide, but soon narrowed, and a mile or two on it assumed entirely the aspect of a river about the width of the Thames at London, winding among low but undulating and often hilly country.
The scene was exactly such as might be expected in the interior of a continent.

The channel continued of a uniform average width, with reaches and sinuous bends, one bank being often precipitous, or even forming vertical cliffs, while the other was flat and apparently alluvial; and it was only the pure salt-water, and the absence of any stream but the slight flux and reflux of the tide, that would enable a person to tell that he was navigating a strait and not a river.