t understanding, that every one must
hold himself ready to go aboard so soon after daylight as the hostile
boats should leave the river. "If," said Gilly to Rudolph, while they
stood thinking under the stars, "if his boat is still there, now that
he--after what we saw."

At dawn they could see the ragged flotilla of sampans stealing up-river
on the early flood; but of the masts that huddled in vapors by the
farther bank, they had no certainty until sunrise, when the green rag
and the rice-measure appeared still dangling above the Hakka boat.

Even then it was not certain--as Captain Kneebone sourly pointed
out--that her sailors would keep their agreement. And when he had piled,
on the river-steps, the dry wood for their signal fire, a new difficulty
rose. One of the wounded converts was up, and hobbling with a stick; but
the other would never be ferried down any stream known to man. He lay
dying, and the padre could not leave him.

All the others waited, ready and anxious; but no one grumbled because
death, never punctual, now kept them waiting. The flutter of birds,
among the orange trees, gradually ceased; the sun came slanting over
the eastern wall; the gray floor of the compound turned white and
blurred through the dancing heat. A torrid westerly breeze came
fitfully, rose, died away, rose again, and made Captain Kneebone curse.

"A fair wind lost," he muttered. "Next we'll lose the ebb, too, be
'anged."

Noon passed, and mid-afternoon, before the padre came out from the
courtyard, covering his white head with his ungainly helmet.

"We may go now," he said gravely, "in a few minutes."

No more were needed, for the loose clods in the old shaft of their
counter-mine were quickly handled, and the necessary words soon uttered.
Captain Kneebone had slipped out through the water gate, beforehand, and
lighted the fire on the steps. But not one of the burial party turned
his head, to watch the success or failure of their signal, so long as
the padre's resonant bass continued.

When it ceased, however, they returned quickly through the little grove.
The captain opened the great gate, and looked out eagerly, craning to
see through the smoke that poured into his face.

"The wasters!" he cried bitterly. "She's gone."

The Hakka boat had, indeed, vanished from her moorings. On the bronze
current, nothing moved but three fishing-boats drifting down, with the
smoke, toward the marsh and the bend of the river, and a smal