The voices from the cabin came to him louder, but still as no more than hoarse rumblings too faint to identify as those of Cocker and Lank. Slowly and with difficulty, since he sought to make no noise, Pud drew himself from the water and, with an anxious look at the cabin, some fifteen paces distant, squirmed into the launch and dropped, wet and panting, out of sight. Presently he wormed forward, past the bundle of folded cots and tent that still lay against the engine casing, and groped for the line that was holding the launch to a stake driven in the top of the bank. He regretted then that he had not thought to bring his knife. The stake was ten feet from where he lay stretched on the bow planking, while to cast off at the launch meant losing a good thirty feet of manila rope. He tried pulling the launch’s nose closer to the stake, but he gained but a scant two feet before it grounded. There was nothing for it but to pull the rope through the brass-rimmed hole, work it loose at the cleat and go off without it. He raised his head and looked toward the cabin as his hands fumbled with the line, and as he looked a sudden glare of light shot toward him. The door had opened, voices were plainly distinguishable and, against the yellow light, framed in the doorway, were figures. ‘Well, I’ll get going,’ said a voice that Pud recognized as that of the tall Lank. There was a yawn, interrupted by a second voice, one strange to the listener. ‘You tella heem he not to go up da riv’,’ said the voice. ‘It is not safe, you tella heem.’ ‘Yeah, I’ll look after that,’ answered Lank. ‘He knows he’s got to work down-river this time. Well――’ Pud, for the moment frozen with fright, now did the first thing that entered his head. He squirmed down, lifted the canvas of the tent and, the frame of a cot digging into his ribs, huddled closely, silently beneath it. His heart was beating a dozen times to the second and he thought regretfully of the safety of the dark water flowing alongside. But it was too late now, for he could hear the steps of Lank close at hand. Then the launch tipped and the man’s feet landed close to Pud’s head. A faint light, probably, Pud thought, from his or Tim’s electric torch, shone for an instant under the edge of the canvas. Then it disappeared and, behind him, Pud heard the wheel turned. Suddenly the engine started, shaking the boards against which the boy was lying, and Lank’s feet brushed the canvas as he passed to the bow. There was a whistled tune, broken by mutterings and the sound of feet scrambling from shore to boat, and the flap of a dropped rope. Then Lank went back to the engine and Pud felt the launch swinging as the current dragged it away from the bank. The propeller revolved, stopped, started again, the clutch grinding harshly in the silence. Then, the boat evidently headed downstream, the voyage began.