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The Barang's skipper knew well enough about that missing man, and also where he had gone to. He knew, also, that it was not in Surabaya that he entered the brigantine, but in far subtler manner, as a legitimate, signed-on seaman in Batavia.
"It clean slipped my mind, in the excitement." "Barang's sunk?" echoed Barry and Vandersee together. And queerly enough, Vandersee evinced the greater alarm. "Sure. She was scuttled by some water rats, and her lines cut. I just managed to get her down river and across the channel, so as to block up the Padang; then she settled in the mud."
"Look!" muttered Barry hoarsely. Little needed no such reminder. One by one the Barang's seamen were taken to trees and fastened securely by tough vines. No distinction was made between seamen and the men from the post, since neither wore uniforms but were simply dressed in flimsy cotton pants and shirt.
The big pinnace, which belonged to the invisible gunboat, took on board the Dutch seamen and the survivors of Leyden's band, leaving the Barang's crew under Rolfe and Blunt on board the schooner with Barry. Tom Little was in close conversation with Houten, and Gordon stood by as if quietly awaiting the outcome of it.
The river soon seethed with activity again. Bill Blunt came down from the village, leading the crew with great importance, for he was going to a job that would call forth all his exhaustive knowledge of the sailor's craft. Jerry Rolfe scouted for boats, and by half-ebb tide the Barang's wet decks were filled with men.
Goring's activities, because he had been on the Barang's quarterdeck when the big Hollander introduced her to the skipper; but if one thing was more certain than another, it was that Vandersee had nothing whatever in common with Leyden, save enmity, and here was a girl avowedly friendly to Leyden accepting the advice of Vandersee's friend.
His face had darkened, and the scowl that sat on his forehead reminded Little of a certain scene on a hotel veranda in Surabaya. Further speech or thought was cut short then by a cry from one of the Barang's crew, and topping the last rise of the river bank marched three white men in the uniform of naval officers, followed by twelve stout natives in seamen's rig.
Whatever his knowledge of Houten's plans might be, it apparently had not included the association of the Barang's skipper with the rude sailor who had upset him on the hotel veranda in Surabaya. If he harbored resentment for that affair, he concealed it now and tried to assume an expression of relief. "I'm glad you've come," he explained, with a sour smile that was meant to be pleasant.
"All this stuff about opium smuggling doesn't concern us much. We came here on a definite errand for Cornelius Houten, and it seems that's a flivver. What's to hinder Little and myself clearing out from here? Your affair with Leyden isn't our affair, is it?" "Oh, Cap'n, I forgot to tell you the Barang's sunk," put in Jerry Rolfe, who had approached and had been listening.
They broke and drove blindly for the river, to meet the colossal bulk of Houten, silent, impassive, standing out like a mountain to bar their flight; and the Barang's men, lined beside him, joined the first of a line of cool, steady naval seamen whose end numbers were still beyond the lighted area.
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