"Hush!" Jack answered, with one finger on his lip. "We're drawing near the outskirts of the village now. You must be very quiet. I can just see the grass roof of Taranaka's temple peeping above the brushwood to the right. In three minutes more we shall be out in the open."
And sure enough he told the truth. Almost as he ceased speaking, the noise of savage voices fell full upon my ear from the village in front, and I could hear the natives, in their hideous corroboree, beating hard upon their hollow drums of stretched skin, and shouting in the dance to their drunken comrades.
It was a ghastly noise, but it did our hearts good just then to hear it.
I could almost have clapped my hand upon Jack's back and given him three cheers for his gallant guidance when we saw the village plot opening up in front of us, and the naked savages, in their war-paint and feathers, guarding the door of Taranaka's temple. But the necessity for caution compelled me to preserve a solemn silence. So we crouched as still as mice behind a clumpy thicket of close-leaved tiro bushes, and peeped out from our ambush through the dense foliage to keep an eye upon the scene till the _Albatross_ hove into sight in the harbor.
"My father and my mother must still be there," Jack whispered under his breath, but in a deep tone of relief. "The Tanaki men are guarding them exactly as they did when Martin and I left the island. I almost think I can see Miriam's head through the open door. We shall be in time still to deliver them from these bloodthirsty wretches."
"In what direction must we look for the _Albatross_?" I whispered back. "Will she come in from the south there?"
"O, no!" Jack answered in a very low voice. "That's an island to the right--a little rocky island that guards the harbor. There's deep water close in by the shore that side. Martin 'll try to bring her in the northern way, so that the natives mayn't see her till she's close upon the village. It's a difficult channel to the north, all full of reefs and sunken rocks; but I think he understands it, he's swam in it so often. We won't see her at all till she's right in the harbor and just opposite the temple."
We were dying of thirst now, and longing for drink, but could get nothing to quench our drought. "What I would give," I muttered to Tom Blake, "for a drink of water!"