Nobody had heard a sound, save the indescribable night voices of the jungle and the rippling of the black waters; yet the big Hollander's ears had heard something different, and as he spoke he swung his huge bulk out of the boat and up the bank by the vines that had served him in coming, disappearing from sight and sound swiftly and silently as a great cat. Little and Barry leaned towards each other, seeking to discern features and expressions. It was hopeless in the blackness, but Barry's feelings were revealed in his tone.
"Stow this awning!" he growled, rising to his feet and furiously casting off the stern line. "Little, if you need sleep, catch it now. I'll wait no longer for the answer to this riddle." Then to the crew he barked: "Cast off for'ard; shove off, bow; step the masts and make sail!"
Again the boat moved smoothly through the water, the near bank faded into the general smudge of night, and she stood over until the farther shore appeared like a darker patch on a dark screen. Then two seamen with keen eyes were told off to keep the bank in view, and they alone served as guides for the blind course.
For hours they stemmed the stream, brushing overhanging vines and mosses with their masts at times; then a great round moon peeped over the tangled trees and shed a ribbon of vivid light upon the river, ever intensifying and widening until the surrounding country stood revealed to them as clearly as in noontime.
Little sat beside the skipper, wide-eyed and alert as himself, and now they could see something of the windings of the stream. Barry's chart had shown the river only as far as navigation was possible for vessels coming up from the sea, and that stopped at a very short distance above the trading post. Here, a few miles beyond the point where they had left Vandersee, the banks trended ever in a wide sweep, reach after reach, until, allowing for the moon's hourly passage, something in her position proved to Barry what he had for some time begun to suspect.
"Say, Little," he remarked, "we've sailed or rowed almost twenty miles now, and be darned if I don't think we're within five miles of the post yet!"
"Anything's likely to me, Barry," returned Little carelessly. "If you said we'd gone the other way and would sight Surabaya in fifteen minutes, I'd believe you, old sailor. This darkness and light, racket and hush, mud flats and moss on the masts, all in one evening, has got me flummuxed. But I've got one little thought myself," he added dreamily.
"Ye Gods!" ejaculated Barry sarcastically. "What?"
"Oh, just whether Leyden knows Vandersee's here or not."