She saw Alban on the landing-stage. He got into a prahu and as the launch dropped her anchor he went on board.
She told Oakley that the reinforcements had come.
'Will the DO go up with them when they attack?' he asked her.
'Naturally,' said Anne coldly.
'I wondered.'
Anne felt a strange feeling in her heart.
For the last two days she had had to exercise all her self-control not to cry.
She did not answer. She went out of the room.
A quarter of an hour later Alban returned to the bungalow with the captain of constabulary who had been sent with twenty Sikhs to deal with the rioters.
Captain Stratton was a little red-faced man with a red moustache and bow legs, very hearty and dashing, whom she had met often at Port Wallace.
'Well, Mrs Torel, this is a pretty kettle of fish,' he cried, as he shook hands with her, in a loud jolly voice.
'Here I am, with my army all full of pep and ready for a scrap.
Up, boys, and at 'em.
Have you got anything to drink in this benighted place?'
'Boy,' she cried, smiling.
'Something long and cool and faintly alcoholic, and then I'm ready to discuss the plan of campaign.'
His breeziness was very comforting.
It blew away the sullen apprehension that had seemed ever since the disaster to brood over the lost peace of the bungalow.
The boy came in with a tray and Stratton mixed himself a stengah.
Alban put him in possession of the facts.
He told them clearly, briefly and with precision.
'I must say I admire you,' said Stratton.
'In your place I should never have been able to resist the temptation to take my eight cops and have a whack at the blighters myself.'
'I thought it was a perfectly unjustifiable risk to take.'
'Safety first, old boy, eh, what?' said Stratton jovially.
'I'm jolly glad you didn't.
It's not often we get the chance of a scrap.
It would have been a dirty trick to keep the whole show to yourself.'
Captain Stratton was all for steaming straight up the river and attacking at once, but Alban pointed out to him the inadvisability of such a course.
The sound of the approaching launch would warn the rioters. The long grass at the river's edge offered them cover and they had enough guns to make a landing difficult.
It seemed useless to expose the attacking force to their fire.
It was silly to forget that they had to face a hundred and fifty desperate men and it would be easy to fall into an ambush.
Alban expounded his own plan.
Stratton listened to it. He nodded now and then.
The plan was evidently a good one.
It would enable them to take the rioters on the rear, surprise them, and in all probability finish the job without a single casualty.
He would have been a fool not to accept it.
'But why didn't you do that yourself?' asked Stratton.
'With eight men and a sergeant?'
Stratton did not answer.
'Anyhow it's not a bad idea and we'll settle on it.
It gives us plenty of time, so with your permission, Mrs Torel, I'll have a bath.'
They set out at sunset, Captain Stratton and his twenty Sikhs, Alban with his policemen and the natives he had collected.
The night was dark and moonless.
Trailing behind them were the dug-outs that Alban had gathered together and into which after a certain distance they proposed to transfer their force.
It was important that no sound should give warning of their approach.
After they had gone for about three hours by launch they took to the dug-outs and in them silently paddled upstream.
They reached the border of the vast estate and landed.
Guides led them along a path so narrow that they had to march in single file.
It had been long unused and the going was heavy.