A little light filtered through the meshes of the mats, but not enough for his purpose. Accordingly he took out his knife and cut a slit in the covering on the side away from the huts. Then, crouching low so that the matting should not be disturbed by his movements, he crept to the engine.
He found that the petrol tank was nearly empty, but luckily there were two or three unbroached cans of the spirit. One of these he opened, and poured the petrol in a slow noiseless trickle into the tank. It was impossible without noise to test the machinery, but he examined it as carefully as he could in the dim light: everything appeared to be in order.
Now crawling into the fore part of the boat, he slipped his hand between the matting and the gunwale, and cautiously cut through the mooring-rope. It fell into the water with a dull splash; fortunately the vessel was so low built that the rope had only a foot or two to fall. Waiting until the unbroken silence without assured him that the old woman had not taken alarm, he crept back again towards the stern, lowered himself into the water as silently as he had raised himself before, and began to haul very gently. The shore was soft, so that the movement of the keel over it made no sound; on the other hand, the soil clung to the keel, and to move the vessel required more force than Errington expected. But it slid inch by inch towards the water, and might have floated in absolute silence had Errington been able to see what he was doing. But just at the critical moment, when the most minute care was needed, he pulled a little harder than he should have done, and the bow dropped into the water with a splash.
Errington, hidden behind the stern, did not see the little contretemps which might have provoked a smile from Lo San, if he had had any sense of humour, and had not been quaking with fright. At the splash the old woman looked up from her cooking, in the direction of the waterway through which the sampans had come. Seeing nothing there, she muttered a malediction, and was turning to her stove again, when she happened to notice that the mat-covered craft a few yards away was floating free, and that the mooring-rope lay on the shore. Without any suspicion other than that the vessel had somehow worked loose, she dropped the fish she had been preparing, and hobbled down the shore with the intention of tying the boat up again. Quickening her steps as she saw that it was moving away, she leant forward to clutch it, missed her footing, and plunged headlong into the water with a stifled scream.
Hitherto Errington had carefully kept out of sight; but at the double sound of scream and splash he could not refrain from peeping round the side of the boat. The old woman was floundering in the effort to regain her feet. The water was no more than three feet deep, but the bottom was muddy, and the woman, scared by what was probably the first immersion of her life, could not stand up, but was still on hands and knees, only her head showing. Errington had never heard such screaming. Fearing that the old creature would be drowned, he rushed forward in his impulsive way to help her.
His chivalry deserved a better reward. The old crone, as soon as she saw him, let out a series of even more piercing shrieks than before, and, finding her feet at last, scrambled ashore, and with a limping trot like that of an aged cab-horse, fled towards the huts. "Fan-kwei! Fan-kwei[#]!" she screamed, rubbing her wet face with her fishy fingers.
[#] Foreign devil.
Even as he had reached her, Errington repented of his impulse, for the woman's shrieks had already drawn a grimy head to the entrance of one of the huts. The pirate was presumably too sleepy, or too much confused at the sudden awakening, to see clearly what was going on, for he gave Errington time to dash back to the stern of the boat. Hauling it through the reed-bed--and it required little force now that the vessel was afloat---he fastened the stern to the sampan with a few turns of the rope, telling Lo San to paddle with all his might towards the water-way.
The Chinaman needed no second bidding. The huts were already discharging their fierce-eyed occupants. Lo San paddled with an energy of which he had never shown himself capable in the service of his master. Errington waded beside the flying boat, doing what he could to fend it off the reed banks. He was already out of sight of the huts, but the yells and execrations behind showed only too clearly that the pirates were launching their sampans in pursuit. Had he got sufficient start of them to gain the pool?
"Ossoty! ossoty[#]!" he cried to Lo San, and the panting Chinaman put still more force into his strokes. Errington looked behind, but the windings of the channel, and the encumbering reeds, prevented him from seeing how near the pursuers had come. His momentary turn caused the boat to jam against a clump of rushes, and a few seconds were lost while he went to the bows and with a heave of the shoulder sent the vessel once more into the stream.