The report of his musket rang out sharply and was followed by a groan. Kipping clutched his thigh with both hands and fell. The men stopped rowing and the boat, gradually losing way, veered in a half circle and lay broadside toward us. In the midst of the confusion aboard it, I saw Kipping sitting up and cursing in a way that chilled my blood. "Oh," he moaned, "I'll get you yet! I'll get you yet!" Then some one in the boat returned a single shot that buried itself in our bulwark. "Yeeeehaha! Got Kipping!" the cook cackled. "He got Kipping!" "Now then," cried Roger, "bear off. We've had enough of you. If ever again you come within gunshot of this ship, we'll shoot so much lead into you that the weight will sink you. It's only a leg wound, Kipping. I was careful where I aimed." In a disorderly way the men began to pull out of range, but still we could hear Kipping shrieking a stream of oaths and maledictions, and now Falk stood up and shook his fist at us and yelled with as much semblance of dignity as he could muster, "I'll see you yet, all seven of you, I'll see you a-swinging one after another from the game yard-arm!" Then, to our amazement, one of them whispered to the others behind his hand, and they all began to laugh again as if they had played some famous joke on us. Instead of going toward the island, they rowed out into the ocean. We could not understand it. Surely they would not try to cross the China Sea in an open boat! Were they so afraid of the natives? Still we could hear Kipping, faintly now, bawling wrath and blasphemy. We could see Captain Falk shaking his fist at us, and very clearly we could hear his faint voice calling, "I'll sack that ship, so help me! We'll see then what's become of the money." Where in heaven's name could they be going? Suddenly the answer came to us. Beyond them in the farthest offing were the tiny sails of the almost becalmed junk. They were rowing toward it. Eight mariners from a Christian land! In that broad expanse of land and sea and sky, the only moving object was the boat bearing Captain Falk and his men, which minute after minute labored across the gently tossing sea. Already the monsoon was weakening. The winds were variable, and for the time being scarce a breath of air was stirring. From the masthead we watched the boat grow smaller and smaller until it seemed no bigger than the point of a pin. The men were rowing with short, slow strokes. They may have gone eight or ten miles before darkness closed in upon them and blotted them out, and they must have got very near to the junk. The moon, rising soon after sunset, flooded the world with a pale light that made the sea shine like silver and made the island appear like a dark, low shadow. But of the boat and the junk it revealed nothing. The cook and Blodgett and I were talking idly on the fore hatch when faintly, but so distinctly that we could not mistake it, we heard far off the report of a gun. "Listen!" cried Blodgett.