Together they crouched down in the narrow space between the piled boxes and the gunwale. With beating hearts they heard the rumbling draw nearer; the heavy tramp of the man; his mutterings as he heaved his load from the truck and lowered it to the deck of the barge. They held their breath. Would the man follow it? No; he swung it almost over their heads, and it settled with a bump a few feet short of them.
The moment the man retreated, Martin dashed back to the aft rope, struggled with the knot until he managed to cast it off, hastened forward and cast off the rope there likewise. The barge swung free. Against its gunwale lay the long heavy sweeps with which it was propelled. Martin attempted to lift one of these, but found it impossible to do so without Gundra’s help.
The barge was already lurching shoreward on the tide. In a few moments, unless its motion was checked, it would strike the mud, and then all hope of escape was lost. Holding the sweep between them, the boys drove it against the beams that supported the jetty, and tried to push off.
Unused to the handling of so clumsy an implement, the boys were unable to prevent its end from glancing off the slimy timber, and it plunged with a splash into the water. But they had not let it go. Levering it up across the gunwale, they once more made the attempt, and by exerting all possible pressure were able to force the barge a yard or two from the jetty. Then they were almost undone by their own vigour, for the sweep slipped again as the barge sheered away, and they fell forward, striking against the gunwale, and dropping the sweep with a loud clatter.
They seized it just in time to save it from being carried overboard. Meanwhile the barge had lost the impetus they had given it, and was again drifting shoreward. It was clear that the noise they had made had been heard by the men. There was a shout and hurried footsteps on the quay, and Martin, looking up, could just see in the starlight the man at the upper door leaning out and making wild movements with his arms, evidently to urge on his mate below.
In a moment this man came in sight, running along the quay to the spot where he expected the barge to strike if it escaped the mud. Martin saw that the next few minutes would decide his fate.
“Catch hold!” he cried to the Indian boy. “Shove when I tell you.”
He pointed the sweep at the angle between two supporting beams, and with Gundra’s help drove it into the notch, and brought all his weight and strength to bear upon it. The barge sidled outward, slowly, too slowly. Martin realised that if the man had run on to the jetty, he could have jumped on board before the heavy vessel was out of range.
“Don’t let go,” Martin called, as the sweep dropped from its resting-place into the water.
Keeping a tight grasp on the pole, the boys pulled it slowly through the water. The barge swung about a little, and Martin saw with joy that the gap between it and the quay was wider. It was now too late for the man to attempt the leap. He stood on the quayside, shouting, cursing, gesticulating to his companions, two men who were running to join him. The second of them, lumbering along in the rear, Martin recognised as Sebastian the fat cook.