"P'r'aps they are not 'liberty men' any longer," remarked Flemming. "It's jolly rummy that they haven't shown up before this. Right-o, Dick; I'll take on with the pumping."
Roche and the Tenderfoot went on deck. The tide was still ebbing. The wind had dropped, and hardly a sound disturbed the stillness of the night except the ripple of the water against the Olivette's bows, and the monotonous chug-chug of the semi-rotary pump.
A steamer's navigation lights appeared up-stream. She was heading towards the anchored Olivette. Rayburn glanced at his companion.
"It's all right," said Dick reassuringly. "She's coming round a bend; that's why she appears end on. She'll starboard her helm in half a tick."
But the vessel held on until even Roche began to think that there would be a collision. He glanced aloft to make sure that the Olivette's riding-lamp was burning brightly.
The steamer reversed engines, and lost way within twenty yards of the Olivette. A hoarse voice hailed in an unintelligible patois. Dick caught but two words, "gabare" and "abandonnée".
"A l'ancre.... A l'autre côté.... Sept kilomètres en bas," replied Roche, guessing that the strange craft was the tug they had seen earlier in the night, and that, having missed one of her charges, had returned in search of the derelict barge.
To his no small satisfaction, Roche found that his halting reply was understood, for, with a "Merci beaucoup, m'sieu", the skipper of the tug rang for full speed ahead.
Barely was the steamboat out of sight when the Olivette began to rock violently. It was not the swell of the tug that had caused the commotion; it was the turn of the tide and the tail-end of the bore in a succession of waves of about four feet in height.
The erratic rolling and pitching alarmed Flemming considerably, for the water in the bilges gushed between the floor-boards and swirled ankle-deep from side to side.