"Who are you? Where are you taking us?" I whispered; but he didn’t answer, and, changing his hands, went on pushing the scull from side to side very vigorously, but stopped a minute or two later and looked behind us, where we could all at once see a great red glow, which showed up the junks we had just passed.
"They’ve set a light to the boss’s hoose," he whispered; "they’ll be after seeking the little lass the noo." And he worked harder and harder, and the shadows got darker and the water more narrow, and I knew that we were getting under some high land, and wondered whether we really were being taken to that house on the hill. Up over our heads we could hear a lot of talking and wrangling, and suddenly a rifle went off, and then another, and we could hear cries, and presently all was quiet again.
My heart was simply thumping against my side.
"God grant we be in time," I heard him say to himself; and he stopped sculling for a second, peered through the darkness, and then shot the boat in till it rasped against some stones.
"Get oot!" he whispered. "Doan’t talk a word, and jest follow me."
We got ashore as quickly as we could. He had a piece of rope in his hand, and made us all take hold of it, and we followed him along a steep path. We hadn’t gone ten yards when there were more rifle shots and more yells.
"The Lord be praised! they’re still shooting ’em," he said, and hurried along all the faster. I could hardly keep up, and the stones hurt my feet.
We seemed to be making a long curve away from the noises and the water, and he kept on losing the path, and we had to shove our way between high bushes, which scratched us; but then we turned to our right, and could see the top of a high wall right in front of us.
He broke into a run, we dropped the rope, and ran after him up to a small door. He fumbled for a moment with the lock, it opened, we crept in, and he shut it again.
We were in a garden place now, pitch dark, and he led us across it underneath some trees with low branches. The noise of rifles seemed to be right in front of us, and we came to the walls of a house with not a light showing. He knocked at a door; nothing happened. We rushed round to the other side to a smaller one; he tried his key again, and it opened, and an old Chinese woman with a tiny lamp in her hand, and her mouth open with fright, was looking down at us.