line across the mouth of the river.

If those ships guarding the river's mouth were only anchored, our
problem would have been simplified; but they were constantly shifting,
and as they showed no sailing lights, no telling where, after a signal
flashed, they would fetch next up; and always, showing no signal-light
whatever, would be the others guarding what they would like to have us
mistake for an open passage in the dark.

Their sending up so many signals indicated a bewilderment as to our
whereabouts. By this time they must have known ashore that we were not
anchored inside the bar; and out to sea they must have known we had not
foundered in the surf, and also by this time they had probably
discovered that we were not in the lagoon.

"They will puzzle it out soon. Get your floating mines ready," ordered
Captain Blaise. That was my work, and in anticipation of it I had
knocked together two small rafts loaded with explosives and a large one
with explosives and combustible stuff to burn brightly for half an hour
or so.

"What does this mean?" Miss Cunningham was at Captain Blaise's elbow.
She could not have asked a question more pleasing to him.

"It means that we are like a rat in a hole with half a dozen big cats
guarding the exit. It is an acutely angled corner we are in, Miss
Shiela, and a string of corvettes and sloops-of-war stretched, no
knowing just where, across the narrow way out. So far they do not know
we are here, but before long it is bound to occur to some of them that
this is the _Dancing Bess_ and that she has made the Momba River