Although we went along much more slowly, the few lights on shore were getting bigger and bigger. Presently the steam boat steamed very slowly, indeed, and then stopped, and we ran alongside. It was low tide, and we had begun to get into the narrow channel, running up the creek into the town.
Mr. Lawrence was in the steam boat—I had not seen him before—and had been navigating us. Then we heard Mr. Hoffman's voice.
"Good heavens! what are you doing here?" the Commander asked.
"I'm coming with you," he said. "I will show Whitmore the way up to that gun."
The Commander told him that he was not well enough, and tried to persuade him to go back, but he absolutely refused, and crawled across us into the cutter. "I've taken half a bottle of quinine, and shall be all right. You could never find that gun by yourselves."
We could see, even in the dark, how "shaky" he was.
Then Lawrence shoved off back again to wait for us, the steam boat giving a few swirls with her screws, and slipping away out of sight in a moment.
It was simply pitch dark, and when I tell you that though Withers was sitting behind me, and had his knees in my back, and yet I couldn't see his face when I turned round, you will understand how dark it was.
We then started to pull inshore. The oars had been muffled by having strips of fearnought (thick flannel, almost like felt, which the stokers make into trousers for stokehold work) bound round them where they rubbed in the rowlocks, and the rowlocks themselves had more fearnought nailed all over them, so that they only made a soft noise, with a squeak now and again.
We were quite close to the shore on our port side, and one or two little streaks of light—I suppose they came from the fishermen's huts—didn't look more than a hundred yards away.