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The bars at the mouths of the streams kept the ships from entering; and they had to wait outside while the planters brought their produce down upon rafts and in shallow-draft barges, pirogues, and shallops. Some of the most picturesque of the colonial river trade was at these little creek-mouth piers.
As every German knows, "The Riddle of the Sands" is a novel written by a very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion of his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to be embarked in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and despatched simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian Isles.
They were in about five feet of water, more than enough for the shallow-draft houseboat. His principal worry was the outboard propellers. He didn't want to break one on a log that might be sticking up underwater. The squall was closer now, and the sky was growing dark. Rick estimated that they had no more than ten minutes before the storm would hit.
And in the foreground, against a disused Hard that was a couple of hundred yards lower down than the village Hard, a large white yacht was moored, probably the largest yacht that had ever threaded that ticklish navigation. She was a shallow-draft barge-yacht, rigged like a Thames barge, and her whiteness and the glint of her brass, and the flicker of her ensign at the stern were dazzling.
Who worked for nothing, or for the empty honor of it, in Arabia? Nobody can pass the reef at night in shallow-draft lateen-sail boats without having him on board; and though he was never ostensibly paid for his services, it was understood that he performed pilot service in return for certain other opportunities that sometimes came his way.
Boisot's force, with those already an the scene, numbered about 2500, equipped with some 200 shallow-draft boats and row-barges mounting an average of ten guns each. Among them was the curious Ark of Delft, with shot-proof bulwarks and paddle-wheels turned by a crank.
It was then that Fate sent down in a twin-screw shallow-draft gunboat, designed for the defence of rivers, of some two hundred and seventy tons' displacement, Lieutenant Harrison Edward Judson, to be known for the future as Bai-Jove-Judson.
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