“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.”

“That’s so,” I agreed, not believing a word of it, any more than they.  One had to calm one’s feelings somehow; the men were too weary to drive the canoes another mile at anything like speed.  Coutlass, who had heard every word of the argument, burst out into such yells of laughter that Fred threw a rock at him.  “Curse you, you ghoul!”

Coutlass changed his tone from demoniacal delight to quieter, grim amusement.

“They will do nothing, eh?  It is I, Georges Coutlass, who need do nothing!  I have my revenge by proxy!  Wait and see!”

Fred threw a second rock, and hit him squarely.

“Gassharamminy!” swore the Greek.  “Do you know that rock is harder than a man’s head?”

Fred let the boys light a fire when the sun had risen high enough to make the little blaze not noticeable.  Most of the men were asleep, but though our eyes ached with the long vigil we could not have copied them.  About three hours after daylight we breakfasted off slices of hot boiled hippo tongue and cold lake water, without salt or condiments of any kind, and with discontent increased by that unpleasing feast we aroused the boys and drove them into the canoes.

We forced the pace again, and picked up smoke on the sky-line an hour before noon, but it was not from a steamer’s funnel.  It was lazy, flat-flowing, spreading smoke with a look of iniquity about it that sent our hearts to our mouths.  We paddled toward it with frenzied energy, and long before any of us could make out details Coutlass, standing balancing himself amidships, told us what we knew was true and flatly refused to believe.

“It’s the Queen of Sheba burning to the water-line!”

“Sit down, you fool, or you’ll upset us!”

“She’s gutted already—­the flame is about finished! nothing now but smoke!”

“Sit down, you lying idiot, and hold your tongue!”