"

Devar and McCulloch greeted the discovery with appropriate remarks, but
the situation called for deeds rather than words. The cumbrous craft
was swinging gayly out into the stream, displaying a light-hearted
energy and ease of motion which would certainly not have been
forthcoming had it been the object of her unwilling crew to get her
under way.

The whereabouts of Brodie and the automobile were still vaguely
discernible by two fast converging luminous circles now some twenty
yards distant, and the fact was painfully borne in on them that in
another few seconds this landmark would be swallowed in a sea of mist
and swirling waters.

Curtis, accustomed to the vagaries of Chinese junks in the swift
currents of the Yang-tse-Kiang, adopted the only measures which
promised any degree of success. He ran to the helm, which had been
lashed on the starboard side to keep it from fouling any submerged
piles near the bank. Casting it loose, he put it hard a-port, and
shouted to the policeman and Devar to bring a couple of boards from the
floor of the well, and use them to sheer in the hulk to the bank.

The night was pitch dark, the mist fell on them like an impenetrable
veil, and the wooded heights which dominated both banks of the river
prevented any ray of light from coming to their assistance. Still,
they had two lamps, which at least enabled them to see each other, and
Curtis could judge with reasonable accuracy of the direction they were
taking by the set of the stream. They seemed to have been toiling a
weary time before the helmsman fancied he could see something looming
out of the void. He believed that, however slowly, they were surely
forging inshore again, and was about to ask Devar to abandon his
valiant efforts to convert a long plank into a paddle and go forward in
order to keep a lookout, when the barge crashed heavily into the stern
of a ship of some sort, and simultaneously bumped into a wharf. The
noise was terrific, coming so unexpectedly out of the silence, and
their argosy careened dangerously under some obstruction forward.

No orders were needed now. They scrambled ashore, abandoning one of
the lamps in their desperate hurry, and the policeman instantly
extinguished the light of the other by pressing the glass closely to
his breast when a rumble of curses heralded the coming on deck of two
men who had been aroused from sleep on board the vessel by the
thunderous onset of the colliding barge.