“Here, I must go and have a talk to Mr Brooke,” I said; and I crept back to where he sat steering and sweeping the darkness he could not penetrate on either side.
“Well, Herrick,” he said eagerly. “News?”
“Yes, sir; bad news. Ching is afraid that the junks have crept by us in the night.”
“I have been afraid so for some time, my lad, for the tide must have brought them down long enough ago.”
He relapsed into silence for a few minutes, and then said quietly—
“You can all take a sleep, my lads; Mr Herrick and I will keep watch.”
“Thankye, sir, thankye,” came in a low murmur, and I went forward to keep a look-out there; but not a man lay down, they all crouched together, chewing their tobacco, waiting; while Ching knelt by the bows, his elbows on the gunwale, his chin resting upon his hands, apparently gazing up the river, but so still that I felt he must be asleep, and at last startled him by asking the question whether he was.
“No; too much head busy go sleep. Want findee allee pilate, show Mr Blooke no like pilate. Velly ’flaid all gone.”
How the rest of that night went by, I can hardly tell. We seemed to be for hours and hours without end tacking to and fro, now going up the river two or three miles, then dropping down with the tide, and always zig-zagging so as to cover as much ground as possible. The night lengthened as if it would never end; but, like all tedious times of the kind, it dragged its weary course by, till, to my utter astonishment, when it did come, a faint light dawned away over the sea beyond the mouth of the river, just when we were about a mile below the city.
That pale light gradually broadened, and shed its ghastly chilly beams over the sea, making all look unreal and depressing, and showed the faces of our crew, sitting crouched in the bottom of the boat, silent but quite wide-awake.