It was to Harry Kenyon just as if a boat had thumped up against theirs, and some one with a voice like his own had asked that question.
But there was no answer. All was perfectly still in the cabin, while the noises in the jungle and on the river banks were not so loud.
It was all dark too, for the fire had burned down, and there was no glimmering light through the interstices of the mats.
But he felt that he ought to see that fire, even if it were merely the glowing embers, seated as he was up there on the top of the cabin roof.
Absurd! How could he be sitting up there, and with Sree too!
They could not have got up there, and he was in his place in the cabin. All that was dreaming.
"Then I have been asleep," he said to himself. "I must have dropped off hours ago, and lain here till that woke me. Some one said, 'What was that?' No; I said it to myself, and seemed to hear it."
Harry ceased his musings, feeling that he was certainly wide awake now, and as certain that he had been awakened by a bump on the side of the boat, for there was a faint grinding sound as of another boat rubbing up against the side.
The boy turned hotter then in the darkness, for there was a low whispering plainly heard, and the first thought which came to him now was that some boat had come to attack them in the night, a boatload of the wild, piratical people who lived by robbing and bloodshed. He had from time to time heard of junks and trading boats being attacked and plundered, but only rarely in their neighbourhood. Certainly, though, this was one, and his hand stole to his gun, which he grasped tightly as with a quick movement he rose to a sitting position so that he might alarm his father.
Just then there was a quick, rustling sound as the matting curtain which separated them from the men forward was drawn aside, and with a strange sensation of palpitation in his breast, instead of calling to his sleeping companions, the lad involuntarily cocked both barrels of his gun.