We could see, even in the dark, how "shaky" he was.
Then Lawrence shoved off back again to wait for us, the steam boat giving a few swirls with her screws, and slipping away out of sight in a moment.
It was simply pitch dark, and when I tell you that though Withers was sitting behind me, and had his knees in my back, and yet I couldn’t see his face when I turned round, you will understand how dark it was.
We then started to pull inshore. The oars had been muffled by having strips of fearnought (thick flannel, almost like felt, which the stokers make into trousers for stokehold work) bound round them where they rubbed in the rowlocks, and the rowlocks themselves had more fearnought nailed all over them, so that they only made a soft noise, with a squeak now and again.
We were quite close to the shore on our port side, and one or two little streaks of light—I suppose they came from the fishermen’s huts—didn’t look more than a hundred yards away.
I was very nervous and excited, and when a dog suddenly began to bark, and we could actually hear him rushing down a loose stone beach close to us, my heart seemed to stop beating with a jerk for a little time.
We lay on our oars, he gave one or two angry barks—they seemed to be just outside the boat—and then we heard him give a whine as though he was tired and yawning, he scampered up the beach, gave a low growl, and was quiet.
We went on again, but it was so dark that the Commander crept for’ard into the bows, and we felt our way very slowly along the edge of the mud, shoving her off with boat hooks whenever we got too close.
We had passed some of those lights—they were right behind us now—so that I knew we were well up the creek. We couldn’t see where the water ended, but farther away it was blacker still, and I knew that this was the steep beach and the shore behind it. I tried to remember that drawing, and hung over the side and tried to make out those fishing stakes. We seemed to go on like this for a very long time—we were pulling very slowly against the last of the ebb tide—and then the blackness on our left seemed to get nearer and more upright, and I knew that we must be almost abreast of the battery. I couldn’t see Mr. Whitmore’s cutter, and could very seldom hear it, although we knew that it was very close behind us. A few dogs were barking somewhere inland. There was one, away on our right, howling every minute or two, a most creepy kind of howl, and there were two who answered him on our side of the town. Sometimes others would join in, and you would almost recognize the different barks. I longed for them to leave off. That was the only noise, except the slight splash as the oars dug into the water, and the soft thump against the sides of the row-locks as they dragged them out; but now that we were listening so hard, and were so excited, even this seemed to be very great.