“Yes, coasting boats, I think. We’ll overhaul them as we come back, we must not stop now.”
The vessel was now steaming steadily down stream, not quickly, for there were too many turns, but sufficiently fast to bring them rapidly near their goal.
“Let’s see; I want to have a talk to you, Tom Long, about a trip ashore—shooting,” said Bob.
“Silence there, young gentleman,” said the officer of the watch sternly, and then Bob was called suddenly away, so that he had no opportunity for a quiet chat with the young ensign.
Meanwhile the heavy throb throb of the steamer was the only noise heard save some weird cry of animal or bird in the dense jungle on either side. But every now and then as the waves and wash of the steamer rolled ashore, churning up the mud, they startled the dull, heavy alligators into activity, sending them scurrying off the muddy banks into deep water, to await the passing of the, to them, large water monster, whose great bulk dwarfed them into insignificance the most extreme.
Lower and lower down stream went the steamer with the dense black line of jungle on either side, till at the suggestion of the Malay pilots the steam was turned off, a couple of boats lowered, and the position of the vessel being reversed, she was allowed to float down head to stream, for quite another half-hour, when the word having been given, a small anchor that had been hanging down in the water was let go, without so much as a plash, the stout hemp cable ran quietly out, and the vessel was checked just off the narrow mouth of a creek, which seemed to run up amidst the palms and undergrowth, for there were no mangroves till the tidal waters were reached.
There was a little rapid passing to and fro here, and a couple of boats were silently lowered down, to go a quarter of a mile below to watch the other entrance to the creek, for the Malays were too fox-like not to have a hole for exit as well as one for entry. But everything was done in the most noiseless manner, so that when three more boats full of soldiers, marines, and sailors rowed off for the creek, no one would have imagined that they had slipped off on a deadly errand, or that the steamer was cleared for action, the guns shotted and every man ready to let loose a deadly hail that should cut down the jungle like a scythe amidst the corn.
But the British officers had yet to learn that the Malays were more than their equals in cunning. No sooner had the steamer passed on into the bank of mist and darkness that overhung the river, than there was a rustle, a splash, the rattling noise of large oars being thrust out, and in a couple of minutes the two long snaky prahus they had passed crammed with fighting men were gliding up stream towards the residency, where certainly there were sentries on guard, but no dread of an enemy at hand.
The boats then had pushed off from the steamer, which lay ready to help them, and rowing out of the swift waters of the river they began to ascend the dark and muddy creek, when Bob Roberts, who was with the lieutenant and part of the soldiers in the same boat suddenly whispered—
“Hark! wasn’t that distant firing?”