The man was still silent.
"Tighten the strain very gradually," the captain said to the sailors holding the other end of the rope.

"Raise him two or three feet above the deck, and then, when the doctor holds up his hand, lower him at once again." This was done.

The man, though half strangled, was still conscious, and on the noose being loosened, and Soh Hay saying that, unless he spoke, he would be again run up, he said, as soon as he got his breath, that he would answer any question.

On being taken to the cabin, he said that the prahus had gone down the river, and had ascended the other arm.

They had only gone a few miles above the town, for one had been so injured that there had been difficulty in keeping her afloat, and it was necessary to run her into a creek in order to repair her before going up farther.
Half an hour later steam was up, and before morning the Serpent lay off the mouth of the creek which the Malay pointed out as the one that the prahu had entered.