The boat glided out, Hi John scrambling aboard as she cleared the sand. Nora Sayers tried to answer, but could not. Barnes stood beside Li Fu and waved his hand.
The boat slowly drew up-river under the pull of the two oars and vanished around the head of the islet.
VIII
"Watch and watch, Li Fu," said Barnes, when night settled down on the islet, the river-mouth and the booming surf. "I'm done in. Wake me at midnight; they'll not come until then."
"Not then, I think," said Li Fu. "China boys not like night devils. Plenty devils in liver."
"All right," Barnes laughed as he stretched out in the warm sand. "Let the river-devils fight for us, then!"
About midnight the quartermaster wakened him. There had been no alarm, no sound or sight of the enemy. Only the continuous rolling crash of the surf, regular and unceasing, conflicted with the noises of nightbirds from the jungle. The starlight and thin glow of the sickle moon faintly illumined the white sands and the glittering waters, where the waves curled and broke in running lines of phosphorescent radiance.
At first Barnes found Li Fu's conviction incredible. It was hard to believe that Lim Tock's lascars and Chinese, the latter probably predominating, would relinquish the opportunity to sweep in upon the islet with their boats and finish everything with one determined rush. The Chinese firmly credited the existence of water-devils, however, and river-devils in particular, whose power at night was invincible.
Barnes sat through his lonely watch, stiff and aching from his wound, and found no indication of alarm out on the surging waters, where a heavy ground-swell kept the rollers tumbling in along the shoreline. He began to think that he had wasted himself, despite all. Had he stayed in the boat, it by this time would be far up the river.