"I mean--his messenger." He was gone a noticeable time, but came back smiling.
"Good news, Gilly." He held aloft a scrap of Chinese paper, scrawled on with pencil.

"We need expect nothing these ten days.

They wait for more ammunition--'more shoots,' the text has it.

The Hak Kau--their Black Dog--is a bronze cannon, nine feet long, cast at Rotterdam in 1607.

He writes, 'I saw it in shed last night, but is gone to-day.