“You’re dreaming or drunk!” Fred answered, but Coutlass refused to be disbelieved, and in another moment we were all running as fast as we dared through the darkness toward the camp-fires, where we had left the Goanese snoozing and the dhow snugly moored among the rocks.

The chief and his followers far outdistanced us in spite of their gorged condition—­all except the woman, who jogged dutifully, although unhappily, behind Fred. When we reached the campfires they were standing gazing out on the lake, where we could just make out the bellying sail of the Queen of Sheba leaning like a phantom away from the gaining wind.  The distance was not to be judged in that weak uncertain light.  We all shouted together, but there came no answer and we could not tell whether the sound carried as far as the dhow or not.

“Gassharamminy!—­why don’t you shoot!” shouted Coutlass, dancing up and down the bank in frenzy.  “Give me that rifle!  I’ll show you!  I’ll teach them!”

I believe I would have fired if the rifle had been in my hands.  Brown, last to arrive and most out of breath, joined with Coutlass in angry shouts for vengeance.  Will offered no argument against sending them a parting shot.  Fred set the butt of the rifle down with a determined snort, walked over toward the fire, stirred the embers, threw on more fuel, and looked about him when the dry wood blazed.

“If she has left as much as one blanket among the lot of us, I don’t see it anywhere!” he said, taking his seat on a rock.

“A blanket?” sneered Coutlass.  “She has even your money!  Worse than that—­she has my woman!  You were a gum-gasted galoot not to shoot at her!”

Fred patted the bulging pocket of his shooting jacket.

“Most of the money is here” he said quietly, and we all sighed with relief.

“Take canoes and chase them!” shouted Coutlass, beginning to dance up and down again.

“There’s time enough” Fred answered.  “We know the winds of these parts well enough by this time.  This will blow until midnight.  Then calm until dawn.  After dawn a little more wind for an hour or two, then doldrums again until late afternoon.  They’ll run on a rock in all likelihood.  If they do we can catch them at our leisure, supposing we can get these islanders to paddle.  If it should blow hard, then we can’t catch them anyhow.  Sit down and tell us what happened, Coutlass!”

The Greek cursed and swore and pranced, but all in vain.  Fred was inexorable.  We others grew calmer when the problem of who should paddle the canoes solved itself suddenly with the arrival of fourteen of our own men.  Discovering themselves left behind, they had run along the bank in vain hope of catching the dhow somehow—­perchance of swimming through the crocodile-infested water, and returned now disconsolate, to leap and laugh with new hope at sight of us and of the red meat that Kazimoto had thrown on the ground near the fire.  They came near in a cluster.  Will hacked off a lump of meat for them, and they forthwith forgot their troubles, as instantly as the birds forget when a sparrow-hawk has done murder down a hedge-row and swooped away.