Then he stepped back, and let the piece of rudder he was holding drop to the sand.
"Cheditafa," said he, speaking huskily, "this is one of the Castor's boats.

This is a piece of the boat in which Rynders and the men set out." The negro looked at the captain and seemed frightened by the expression on his face.

For a moment he did not speak, and then in a trembling voice he asked, "Where all them now ?" The captain shook his head, but said nothing.

That pile of fragments was telling him a tale which gradually became plainer and plainer to him, and which he believed as if Rynders himself had been telling it to him.

His ship's boat, with its eight occupants, had never gone farther south than the mouth of the little stream.