Bullets, meanwhile, had been sweeping above the boat, and streaming their way past the ears of its occupants. Spurts of water rose on every hand, while now and again a cascade--a mere child to that thrown up by the shell which had been fired at them at the commencement of this encounter--would splash over the sides of the motor-vessel. Obedient to the order given them, yet grudgingly, for your sailor is a gallant fellow, the crew crouched low behind the sides of the vessel, leaving the Cox fully exposed, and the Commander still standing to his full height in the open cabin, and beside him Geoff, holding his ground--not wincing, not even dodging or bobbing his head, as bullets flicked past him. "Nervous?" asked the Commander, as he stuffed tobacco into his pipe and calmly set the weed alight. "Not you, Keith! Nor Denman either! That's good to see, though it is only what I expected. Now set her going at full speed, and we'll see what we can do to dodge those fellows." A long island of mud, clad with reeds, stood up before the motor-vessel, and it looked for a while as though the Commander had every intention of running her upon it; but at a signal from him--a signal made with a jerk of the hand which gripped his pipe--the Cox pushed his helm over, and the motor-boat shot past the end of the island, and, turning again, sped up behind it. A further jerk, and she turned off at a tangent, and, speeding across a waste of stagnant water, thrust her nose in between two reedy islands, following a channel which hardly seemed wide enough to accommodate her. Turning and twisting, and dodging to right and left, and once grounding with a dull and gentle thud upon the tail of an island, and breaking loose again because of her momentum, the vessel shot across another waste, and, rounding the end of a second stretch of oozy mud, was rapidly brought to a halt. "Ask your old gentleman whether the mud would bear a man," the Commander told Geoff abruptly. "Truly, Excellency," came the immediate answer. "These banks, though they quiver as one walks upon them, are yet solid, for the roots of the reeds have bound the mud together. Excellency, if I may ask a favour, let me land here, so that I may convey a warning to you."