"Silence!" he ordered. "Keep still every one!" and repeated it twice in Kiswahili for the natives' benefit.
We could not see at first which way he was staring through the darkness. It was more than two minutes before I knew what had alarmed him, and then it was sound, not sight that gave me the first clue. There came a purring from the lake; and when I had searched for a minute for the source of it I saw the glow we had watched from the dhow in the storm the first night out—the telltale crimson stain on the dark that rides above a steamer's funnel, and at intervals a stream of sparks to prove they were burning wood and driving her at top speed.
"It can't be the German launch," said I.
"Why not?" demanded Fred irritably. He knew I knew it was the German launch as certainly as he did.
"How can they have patched her boiler?" I asked.
"How many beans make five? They've done it, and there she goes! No other launch on the lake can make that speed! I've heard the British railway people have a launch or two, but they're small enough to have traveled down the line on ordinary trucks. That's the German launch and Schillingschen as surely as we stand here!"
We waited there until dawn, arguing at intervals, not daring to light a fire, nor caring to sleep, Coutlass sitting apart and laughing every now and then like a hyena.
"If the men weren't so dead beat I'd be for carrying on, said Fred.
"What's the use?" argued Brown. "We can't catch the bally launch, can we? Soon as it's daylight they'd see us, like as not. I hope to get drunk once more before I die! Schillingschen 'ud run us down, an' good-by us!"
"I'd say follow them if the men could make it," Will agreed. "But what's the odds? It's us they're after. They'll dare do nothing to the women on the dhow—in British waters."