Even in those brief moments something had been done; the boat had been set in motion, and now glided with the stream from beneath the bamboo platform out at the upper end.
Then at a word the boatmen followed the two gentlemen and Mike out on to the platform, and squatted down at once; Adong and Lahn seized oars, passing the cocoa-nut fibre loops over the posts which served as rowlocks, and, with the boys' hearts beating high with excitement, the boat began to glide rapidly and silently up stream with the tide.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SPEAR HARVEST
The distance was short, and to favour the daring enterprise, the darkness seemed to grow more intense as morning drew near. The banks of the river were invisible as they glided silently along, and the boys were whispering together when Sree suddenly stepped to where they sat amidships.
"We speak not when near the tiger's lair," he said softly. "When we go alongside the boat I pick, I shall hold on, Adong and Lahn will go on board; you two will silently take the spears and lay them along the thwarts."
"Yes," said Phra, and the old hunter passed on, bare-footed, forward to where Adong was wielding his oar.
The two comrades sat straining their eyes, for the barges, they felt certain, were not far ahead, and wondered whether the two boys, as they called them—though they were full-grown men—would succeed in the daring venture; and it was on Harry's tongue to whisper,—
"Oh, I wish we had made Sree send us instead."
It was only a momentary thought, before he felt that the two dark, nearly-naked Siamese, as strong, active and silent in their movements as leopards, from long training as hunters, were far better adapted for the task; and he had nearly come to this conclusion when a low muttering reached his ears, and looking to his left, he could just make out something dark which he knew to be one of the barges anchored almost in mid-stream.