“We shall be hours at it like this,” Hi thought. And they were.
What was hardest to bear came an hour later, as they lay becalmed. Hi saw a boat further inshore creeping down to La Boca under sweeps. Something in her helmsman’s figure seemed familiar to Hi, who was watching her with envy.
“Is that Giordano?” he asked.
“Giordano, si,” they answered.
She was helped by more than the sweeps. She was a better boat in light airs and, being much further inshore, she missed the northward current then moving across the outward bay.
“Why, we are further from La Boca than we were before,” he thought. “We are drifting back. She will be in hours before us and I might have been in her, if I had had a little patience. I was an ass,” he thought. “If I had only stuck to Giordano, I might have been almost there now.”
There was no remedy but patience, which is no remedy but a substitute. Hi watched Giordano’s boat edge on and on. After what seemed to be hours he noticed that the men in Giordano’s boat laid in their sweeps and tended sails. Chigo, who had been watching for something of the sort, laid aside his fender making.
“Here is the breeze,” he said.
The breeze came down to them with a darkening of the water. Very gently the boat began to steal southward again. At a little after ten o’clock they began to draw in to the settlement of fishermen and market gardeners at the mouth of the Miamia river. It was an array of little lime-washed houses, roofed with red tiles. It had a mission church of three bells. At the mouth of the river there was a harbour made by baulks of green-heart timber, which had been steeped in a red enamel as a defence against the worm. Hi had been intent upon his thoughts, planning his ride. Looking up, he saw that Giordano’s boat had not entered the harbour, but had stood on down the coast towards the south. Looking up at the dock in front of him, he saw some Pituba soldiers watching the approach of the boat. Among them was a white man, who seemed to be an officer.
“Just as I thought,” Hi said to himself. “That man on the pier in the city was a detective. Now here I am being shadowed and am going to be questioned.”