He dodged back, grinning and ducking amiably.
"Moh bettah look-see," he chuckled; "dat coolie come-back, he too muchee waitee, b'long one piecee foolo-man." He was wrong.

Whoever handled the Hakka boat was no fool, but by working upstream on the opposite shore, crossing above, and dropping down with the ebb, had craftily brought her along the shallow, so close beneath the river-wall, that not till now did even the little captain spy her.
The high prow, the mast, now bare, and her round midships roof, bright golden-thatched with leaves of the edible bamboo, came moving quiet as some enchanted boat in a calm.

The fugitives by the gate still thought themselves abandoned, when her beak, six feet in air, stole past them, and her lean boatmen, prodding the river-bed with their poles, stopped her as easily as a gondola.

The yellow steersman grinned, straining at the pivot of his gigantic paddle.
"Good boy, lowdah!" called Kneebone.

"Remember _you_ in my will, too!" And the grinning lowdah nodded, as though he understood.
They had now only to pitch their supplies through the smoke, down on the loose boards of her deck.