"To Kowloon. Chop-chop!" shouted Peter. "Cumshaw. Savvy?" He displayed in his palm three silver dollars and the coolie bent his back to the sweep, the sampan heeling out from the black ironside like a thing alive.
Behind them, as this manoeuvre was executed, Peter saw the two duly accredited agents of the Gray Dragon fall in line. But Peter had selected with wisdom. The coolie verified with the passage of every moment the power his ropy muscles implied. Inch by inch, and yard by yard, they drew, away from the pursuing sampans.
Then something resembling the scream of an enraged parrot sang over their heads, and he instinctively ducked, turning to see from which of the sampans this greeting had come.
A faint puff of light-blue smoke sailed down the wind between the two. Which one? It was difficult to say.
They were beginning to leave the pursuit decidedly in the lurch now. Peter's coolie, with his long legs braced far apart on the running-boards, bent his back, swaying like a mighty metronome from port to starboard, from starboard to port, whipping the water into an angry, milky foam.
The pursuers crept up and fell back by fits and starts; slowly the distance widened.
The girl crouched down in the cabin, and Peter, with his automatic in his hand, waited for another tell-tale puff of blue smoke.
Finally this puff occurred, low on the deck of the larger craft. The bullet plunked into the water not two feet from the sweep, and the coolie, inspired by the knowledge that he, too, was inextricably wrapped up in this race of life and death, sweated, and shouted in the savage "Hi! Ho! Hay! Ho!" of the coolie who dearly loves his work.
Satisfied as to the origin of both bullets, Peter took careful aim at the yellow sampan and emptied his magazine, slipping another clip of cartridges into the oblong hole as he watched for the result.
The yellow sampan veered far from her course, and a sweep floated on the surface some few yards aft. Then the sampan lay as if dead. But the other plunged on after.