But one form was not shadowy, nor problematical. Chuh was there, awaiting us, his arms filled with rugs. Without a word he motioned us to follow, preceded us along the side of the yawl to the boat, went before us into it, helped us down, settled us, put the oars into my hands, climbed out again, and leaned his yellow face down at me.
"You pull straight ahead," he murmured. "Good landing place straight before you: dry place on beach, too—morning come soon; you get away then through woods."
"The boat?" I asked him.
"You leave boat there—anywhere," he answered. "Boat not wanted again—we go, soon as high water over bar. Hope you get young missie safe home."
"Bless you!" I said under my breath. Then, remembering that I had some money in my pocket—three or four loose sovereigns as luck would have it, I thrust a hand therein, pulled them out, forced them into the man's claw-like fingers. I heard him chuckle softly—then his head disappeared behind the rail of the yawl, and I shoved the boat off, and for the next few minutes bent to those oars as I had certainly never bent to any previous labour, mental or physical, in my life. And Miss Raven, seeing my earnestness, said nothing, but quietly took the tiller and steered us in a straight line for the spot which the Chinaman had indicated. Neither of us—strange as it may seem—spoke one single word until, at the end of half an hour's steady pull, the boat's nose ran on to the shingly beach, beneath a fringe of dwarf oak that came right down to the edge of the shore. I sprang out, with a feeling of thankfulness that it would be hard to describe—and for a good reason found my tongue once more.
"Great Scott!" I exclaimed. "I've left my boots in that cabin!"
Despite the strange situation in which we were still placed, Miss Raven's sense of humour asserted itself; she laughed.
"Your boots!" she said. "Whatever will you do? These stones!—and the long walk home?"
"There are things to be thought of before that," said I. "We're still in the middle of the night. But this boat—do you think you can help me to drag it up the beach?"
Between us, the boat being a light one, we managed to pull it across the pebbles and under the low cliff beneath the overhanging fringe of the wood. In the uncertain light—for there was no moon and since our setting out from the yawl masses of cloud had come up from the south-east to obscure the stars—the wood looked impenetrably black.