Smith Ruel Perley
The Rival Campers: or, The Adventures of Henry Burns

CHAPTER XII.
A CRUISE AROUND THE ISLAND

“Well, Bob,” said Tom, as they seated themselves on the bunks to collect their wits and think the situation over, “we know who did it, of course. The next thing is to prove it.”

“It won’t be so easy,” responded Bob. “Jack Harvey hasn’t done this thing without first planning out how he could dispose of the tent without attracting the slightest attention. He planned it in a good time, too, when half the village was away at the clambake.”

“Yes,” said Tom, “and that’s what he sailed out on that short trip for, to look in at our tent without exciting any suspicion. He found out that there wasn’t anybody around it, and then he and the others came down past our fire on purpose for us to see them and to prove by every one there that they were in another part of the island when our camp was stolen. He did it, though, and he’s covered it up well. We’ll have hard work to prove it against him.”

“I’ll be madder to-morrow, when I’m not so sleepy.” said Bob. “Let’s go on up to the Warren cottage now, and wait till to-morrow before doing anything. It isn’t going to rain to-night, and the stuff will not be harmed out here without a covering.”

So they travelled up to the Warren cottage, greatly to the surprise of the Warren boys, who had gone to bed and were sound asleep when they got there, and greatly to the concern of good Mrs. Warren, whose indignation did more to comfort them than anything else in the world could have. There was always room for more in the spacious old cottage, and they were soon stowed away in bed, quickly forgetting their troubles in sleep.

“You’ll stay right here for the rest of the summer,” said Mrs. Warren the next morning at breakfast. “You can bring your camp stuff up and store it in the shed, and I guess it will be safe there from Jack Harvey or anybody else. It’s a crying shame, but you’re welcome here, so don’t feel too bad about it. I don’t think the boys will be sorry to have you here.”

“I guess we won’t,” cried the Warren boys, in chorus. “But we’ll get that tent yet, I think,” said George Warren. “I don’t believe Jack Harvey would dare destroy it. He’s got it hidden somewhere, depend upon it. And we must find out where that place is.”

“I wish I could believe it,” said Tom, “but I’m afraid his experience with our box taught him a lesson. It is my belief that he has taken the tent and sunk it out in the bay, weighted with stones, so it will never come to light. However, we will start out after breakfast to see if any one in the village saw him or his crew anywhere near the tent while we were away.”

The search through the village for a clue proved, unfortunately, as fruitless as Tom had feared. Not a soul had seen Harvey or any one of his crew about the camp during the evening, nor, for that matter, anybody else. The disappearance remained as mysterious as though the wind had borne the tent away out to sea.

“Say the word,” said Captain Sam, when he heard of it, “and I’ll go over to Mayville and get warrants for the whole crew. We’ll have them up and examine every one of them. We can’t have things of that sort going on around this village.”

“I don’t want to do it,” said Tom. “At least, not yet awhile. I don’t like to suspect Harvey or any of his crew of actually stealing the tent. It may be they have taken it just to annoy us for a night or two, and we shall get it back again. I’d rather take it as a practical joke for a few days, at any rate, than to have any boy arrested. I can’t believe they would steal it for good, intending to keep it. Let’s wait and see.”

“You’ll never see your tent, then, I’m thinking,” said Captain Sam, “for I don’t believe Harvey has the least idea of bringing it back. And the longer we wait the harder it will be catching him. However, do as you think best. I’ll go down to-morrow and look their camp over, anyway, on my own hook. I have the right to do that. I’m a constable, and I’ll look their camp over on general principles.”

“You’ll not find anything, I fear,” said Tom.

“Fellows,” said George Warren, as they all sat around the open fire that evening, “we haven’t been on a cruise for a long time. What do you say to starting out in the Spray to-morrow for a trip around the island? It will take one, two, or three days, according to the wind, and Henry Burns says he can go. We’ll take along a fly-tent and some blankets, and part of us can sleep on shore, so we won’t be crowded.”

“Great!” cried Bob. “It comes in a good time for us, when we’re without a home – oh, I didn’t mean that,” he added, hastily, as Mrs. Warren looked reproachfully at him. “This is a better home than our camp was, to be sure. I mean, while our affairs are so upset, while we don’t know whether we shall be camping to-morrow or living here. It may help to straighten matters out, and, if by chance Harvey and his crew feel like putting the tent back, this will give them the opportunity.”

“Then we’ll get the lines ready,” said George. “There’s lots of small cod at the foot of the island, – and we might take a run across to the islands below, where there’s lots of bigger ones. We’ll plan to be gone two days or a week, just as it happens, and put in plenty of flour and biscuit and some canned stuff, in case we can’t get fish.”

“How happens it that Henry Burns can get off so easily?” asked Tom.

“Oh, they’ve let up on him a good deal since the capture of Craigie,” answered George. “Now that the papers have said so much about him and the rest of us, and the people at the hotel have made so much of him, Mrs. Carlin has come to the conclusion that he isn’t so much of a helpless child as she thought he was. She lets him do pretty much as he likes now, and so Colonel Witham don’t bother him, either. He will be over by and by, and we’ll make sure he can go.”

Henry Burns put in an appearance soon after, and the subject of the voyage was duly discussed in all its phases, and settled. The next forenoon found them all aboard the little yacht Spray, getting everything shipshape and storing away some provisions and water.

“Looks as though we were going on a long voyage,” said young Joe, as his eyes rested fondly on several cans of lunch-tongue and two large mince pies which Mrs. Warren had generously provided, besides several tins of beef and a small keg of water.

“Well, Joe,” said Arthur, “you know, having you with us to help eat up stuff is equivalent to going on a long voyage. And then, one never knows on a trip of this kind when he is going to get back.”

Which was certainly true, if anything ever was.

They made a great point aboard the Spray, these Warren boys, of having every rope and sail and cleat in perfect condition; no snarled ropes, no torn canvas, and no loose bolts nor cleats to give way in a strain; and they began now, as usual, to see that everything was in shipshape condition before they cast off from their moorings and headed out of the harbour.

The little yacht was, therefore, as trim as any craft could be when they set sail on their voyage, with Mrs. Warren waving good-bye to them from the front piazza.

“I never feel as free anywhere in the world as I do out aboard the Spray on a trip like this,” said George Warren, stretching himself out comfortably on the house of the cabin, while Arthur held the tiller. “It’s the best fun there is down here, after all.”

“Well, I don’t know, a canoe isn’t so bad,” said Bob. “You can’t take so many, to be sure, but when Tom and I get off on that and go down among the islands for a day or two, sleeping underneath it on the beaches at night and cooking on the shore as we go along, we feel pretty much like Crusoes ourselves, eh, Tom?”

“Indeed we do,” answered Tom. “It’s the next best thing, surely, to sailing a boat.”

“By the way, Tom,” asked Arthur, “where did you leave the canoe? Not where any one could get that, I hope.”

“No, that’s safe and snug,” replied Tom. “It’s locked up in your shed, and your mother has the key. That’s one thing we shall find all right when we get back.”

The wind was blowing lightly from the northwest, and, as they were starting out to make the circuit of the island by way of the northern end first, they had to beat their way up along the coast against a head wind.

“This little boat isn’t such a bad sailer,” said George Warren, admiringly, gazing aloft at a snug setting topsail. “For a boat of its size, I guess she goes to windward as well as any. There’s only one thing the matter with her. She’s small, and when she’s reefed down under three reefs, with the choppy seas we have in this bay, she don’t work well to windward, and that’s a fault that might be dangerous, if there were not so many harbours around this coast to run to in a storm.”

“I suppose some day we’ll have a bigger one, don’t you?” queried Joe.

“Yes, when we can earn it, father says,” replied George. “That don’t look so easy, though. A fellow can’t earn much when he’s studying.”

“What’s that up there on the ledges?” interrupted young Joe, pointing ahead to some long reefs that barely projected above the surface of the water.

“They are seals – can’t you see?” replied Arthur. “The wind is right, and we’ll sail close up on to them before they know it. We can’t shoot, because we haven’t any gun aboard, but we’ll just take them by surprise.”

The little Spray, running its nose quietly past the point of the first ledge and sailing through a channel sown with the rocks on either hand, came as a surprise to a colony of the sleek creatures, sunning themselves on the dry part of the ledges. They floundered clumsily off the rocks and splashed into the water, like a lot of schoolboys caught playing hookey, and only when the whole pack had slipped off into the sea did they utter a sound, a series of short, sharp barks, as here and there a curious head bobbed up for a moment, and then dived quickly below again.

“They have as much curiosity as a human being,” said George Warren. “Just watch them steal those quick glances at us, and then bob under water again. The fishermen around here shoot them whenever they get a chance, because they eat the salmon out of the nets, but I never could bear to take a shot at one. They seem so intelligent, like a lot of tame dogs. I don’t believe in shooting creatures much, anyway, unless you want them for food, or unless they are wild, savage animals.”

“That don’t apply to ducks, I hope,” said Tom. “We want to take you up into the woods with us some fall, and have you do some shooting of that kind, – ducks and partridges and perhaps a deer or two.”

“No, I’d like that first rate,” answered George. “It’s this senseless shooting of creatures that you don’t want after they are shot that I don’t believe in. I don’t believe in shooting things just for the sake of killing them. Actual hunting in the woods for game that you live on is another thing. It’s a healthful, vigorous sport that takes one into clean surroundings and does one good.”

They chatted on, discussing this and that, till the yacht at length turned the head of the island and ran along past Bryant’s Cove.

“We won’t forget that harbour in a hurry,” they said, as they sailed by.

The wind was gradually dying down with the sun, and would not carry them much farther that night, though they were soon running before it, as they rounded the uppermost point and headed away for the foot of the island, some thirteen miles away.

“We’ll have just about wind enough to run along to Dave Benson’s place,” said George. “It’s two miles down, but the wind and tide are both in our favour, – what there is of them. We can buy some green corn of Dave, and he will let us pull his lobster-pots and charge us only five cents for each lobster. Things are cheap down here, if you buy them of the fishermen. A little money means a good deal to them. A little flour and tea and sugar at the village store, and they live mighty comfortably on what they catch and what they raise on their farms. They don’t know what it means to be poor, as the poor in our city do.”

“Yes, and they live a happy life, for the most part,” said Henry Burns. “They get a good share of their living out of the sea, and I’ve always noticed that seafaring people are generally very well contented with their lot. You never hear them grumbling, as men do that work hard on farms. The sea seems to inspire them more; at least, it seems so to me.”

“What does ‘inspire’ mean, please, Henry?” queried young Joe, winking at Bob. “It sounds like a very nice word.”

“Inspiration means a strong desire and ambition to do something, and a conviction that one cannot fail,” answered Henry Burns. “For instance, I might feel myself inspired to knock an idea into your head, just like this.” And Henry Burns administered a sound cuff on that young gentleman’s head. “That’s a very crude example,” added Henry Burns. “Perhaps I can give you a better one, if you would like.”

“No, I thank you,” said young Joe. “That will do very well for the present. I think I understand.”

Dave Benson’s place was a weather-beaten old house set in the midst of a corn and bean patch, close by a little creek that ran in from the western bay. It had an air of dilapidation, but, withal, of comfort about it. There was a little garden, some hake were drying on flakes beyond the house, a rowboat and a dory were pulled up on the beach a little way up the creek, and the indispensable sailboat, built by Dave himself in the winter months, was lying a little offshore in the shelter of a projecting hook of land.

“Hulloa, Dave,” shouted George Warren, as a tall, sunburned figure, gaunt but powerful, emerged from the door of the house and peered out across the water at them.

“Hulloa,” he said, laconically. “You all ain’t been over much to see us lately.”

“No, but we thought we would make a call to-day,” said George. “Will you come out and get us? We left the tender behind. We’re going around the island.”

For answer the man shoved his dory off the beach, stepped in, and sculled out to them with one oar out over the stern.

“Climb in here sort of easy like, now,” said he, “and I guess I can take the whole of you ashore at one load. If you two ain’t used to this craft,” he added, addressing Tom and Bob, “you want to look out some, for its tippery and no mistake, though there ain’t no better boat when you know how to behave in it.”

“I guess it’s something like our canoe,” said Tom. “We’re used to that, so I think we’ll manage. Perhaps you never saw a canoe.”

“Not as I know of,” returned the other. “Though I do recall seeing what I thought must be one, from what I’ve heard, going along the shore down below here about an hour ago.”

“It couldn’t have been a canoe,” said Bob, “for ours is the only one on the island, and that is locked up safe at home in the Warren’s shed.”

“Mebbe not,” replied Dave Benson. “I ain’t sure at all. I just noticed there was two boys in it, and they were on their knees and pushing it along with what you call paddles, I think.”

Tom and Bob looked at each other blankly.

“It can’t be possible,” said Tom, at length. “I left ours locked up safe enough. Dave’s made a mistake.”

“Got any corn?” asked Arthur.

“Yes, there’s some growing out there, I reckon. You can go out and pick what you want and gimme what you like for it. It’s good and sweet, I reckon.”

“And lobsters, how about them?” asked young Joe.

“Well, I haven’t pulled the pots to-day,” said Dave. “You can go and do that, too, I reckon. There ought to be some there. I baited them all fresh with cunners and sculpins last night.”

“Let me go and pull them,” said Bob. “I never caught a lobster. Come on, Joe, you can show me how and I’ll do the work.”

“Did you ever handle a dory?” asked Dave.

“No,” answered Bob, “but I’m used to a canoe.”

“And did you ever pull a lobster-pot?”

“No, never saw one.”

“Then you want to look out,” said Dave, and took himself off into his house, leaving the boys to themselves.

Bob got another oar, and, with young Joe in the stern, rowed out a few rods toward some ledges, where Dave had indicated that the lobster-pots were set.

“Did you ever pull a lobster-pot, Joe?” asked Bob, as they came in sight of half a dozen small wooden buoys, about as big as ten-pins, floating at a short distance from one another, with ropes attached.

“No, I never did,” replied Joe; “but I’ve seen it done and it looks easy. You just lift the pot aboard the boat and open a trap-door and take out the lobsters. Only you want to look out how you take hold of one of them, that’s all. It’s all right if you take him by the back.”

On shore, seated on a huge stick of timber, washed ashore long ago and half-imbedded in the sand, the other boys watched the proceedings with interest.

“Bob will do it all right, of course,” said George, winking slyly at Arthur. “It’s a simple enough trick, only it is harder in a dory than in a boat with a keel to it, for a dory slides off so.”

“Just like a canoe,” said Tom.

“By the way,” he added, “is a lobster-pot heavy?”

“That’s the deceptive part of it,” replied George. “It’s a great big cage made of laths with a bottom of boards, and it comes to the surface easy because the water buoys it up. It’s the lifting it out that fools one. It’s got three or four big stones in it to weigh it down, and you have got to bring it out of water with a sudden lift or it will stick half-way.”

In the meantime, Bob, having grasped one of the floating buoys, proceeded to haul in the slack of the rope, which was quite long, to allow for the tide, which was now low.

“It comes up easy,” he said to Joe, as he drew it up slowly to the surface, hand over hand. “Here she comes now. Wait till it lands on the gunwale and then lean over on the other side, so we won’t capsize.” Bob grasped the slats of the big cage and lifted manfully.

The lobster-pot came up all right, as George had explained, till, just at the point where it should have left the water, it stopped suddenly and stuck like a bar of lead. Unluckily, Bob had not counted on that extra weight of stone inside, nor on the loss of the buoyancy of the water. At the same instant, moreover, young Joe, seeing the cage strike the gunwale, shifted over to the other side of the dory. This settled the matter. The pot lodged half-way over one gunwale, hung there for a moment, long enough to careen the crank thing down on its side; Bob and Joe both lost their balance and slid the same way, the dory filled with water, and boys and lobster-pot slumped into the sea.

The boys on shore set up a roar at the mishap of their comrades, while long Dave Benson, emerging once more from his cabin door, was heard to chuckle as he strode down to the shore and shoved off his rowboat.

“It’s just like a canoe, exactly,” he muttered, “just like it – only it’s so different.” And he doubled up at the oars and laughed silently.

Bob and Joe, coming to the surface, puffing and blowing water, were pleased to note the sympathy displayed for them in four boyish forms, rolling off the log and holding on to their sides with laughter. Nor did the keenness of this sympathy abate the whole evening long, for every now and then one of them might be heard to repeat the language of Dave Benson, as he glanced significantly at the others, “It’s just like a canoe – only it’s so different.”

However, Bob and Joe, being duly scrubbed down and invested in a change of duck clothing from the locker of the Spray, did not relish any the less the supper that awaited them, of broiled live lobster, cooked over a glowing bed of coals on the beach, and corn that was as sweet as Dave Benson had promised. They took their chaffing as good fellows and comrades are bound to do, only vowing inwardly to bide their time for revenge.

Then, as night was coming on, they set up their fly-tent on a clean, dry part of the beach, well beyond the reach of the tide, spread down their blankets, and Tom and Bob and Henry Burns turned in to sleep there, leaving the little cabin of the Spray for the Warren boys.

“Bob,” said Tom, “did you hear what Dave Benson said as he brought in the capsized dory, with the lobsters, too?”

“He said it was ‘just like a canoe, only – ’”

“Oh, you dry up, Tom,” exclaimed Bob. “Your turn will come next, so don’t rub it in.”

And they went off soundly to sleep.

The next morning, when they awoke, they found that the wind had altered and was beginning to blow up from the southward. They must, therefore, beat their way down to the foot of the island, some ten miles distant, against a head wind and sea, for a southerly always rolled in more or less of a sea after it had blown for an hour or so.

“Come again,” called out Dave Benson, as they left his cabin astern, and he stood waving them farewell with his weather-beaten hat.

“I’d just like to know what he meant when he said he saw a canoe out here,” said Tom. “I know ours is all right, but he certainly did describe a canoe, when he spoke about its being paddled, and ours is the only one I know of around here.”

“Yes, and he saw it last night, or, rather, yesterday afternoon,” said Bob, “and nobody would have disturbed ours in broad daylight, at any rate.”

But about an hour later, they came suddenly to the conclusion that Dave Benson knew what he was talking about, when Henry Burns exclaimed all at once: “Why, there it is now. Dave Benson was right, after all. That’s a canoe, down about a mile ahead, just off that white line of beach, and there are two paddling it.”

The boys looked in amazement. There could be no mistaking it. Henry Burns had surely spied a canoe. They could make it out quite plainly, pitching slightly in the sea, with apparently some one at either end.

“Quick, get the glass, Joe,” cried George Warren, who had the tiller. “It’s in the locker in the cabin, you know. That will show us just who it is.”

Young Joe dived below and reappeared the next instant, bringing a small telescope.

“Here,” he said, handing it to Tom, “take a look at them.”

Tom adjusted the focus of the glass and sighted the craft ahead, then exclaimed, excitedly: “Yes, it’s them, sure enough. It’s Harvey and Joe Hinman and it’s the canoe. We’ve got them, too, if the Spray can only catch them. We’re sure to get the canoe, at any rate, for they can’t run far or fast with that on their shoulders, if they see us and take to the shore. We know what it is to try to hurry with that.”

“That we do,” returned Bob. “Let me have a look, Tom.”

“Cracky!” he exclaimed, as he put the glass down almost as soon as he had sighted it. “Who’d have thought they would have had the nerve to get that in broad daylight? They must know they are sure to be seen in it, too. What on earth can Harvey be thinking of?”

“We’ll set the club topsail and the other jib in a hurry,” said George, “and perhaps we can overhaul them before they see us.”

They got the extra sail on in a twinkling and laid the course of the Spray a little closer into the wind. Fifteen minutes went by, and they had made rapid progress in overhauling the canoe. They made short tacks, so as not to be seen by the paddlers, if possible, by keeping so far as they could in a line with the stern of the canoe.

Presently, however, the boy who was wielding the stern paddle turned and looked back, and they could see plainly that it was Harvey.

He must have seen them, too, and been vastly surprised, for, carrying across the strip of land at the Narrows, he had surely expected to meet no familiar yacht in the western bay. The occupants of the canoe turned their craft more in toward shore, though not directly, and, at least so it seemed to the boys, began paddling desperately, as though they hoped to escape.

If they had thought they could run away from the Spray in this way, they soon found out their mistake, for the Spray continued rapidly to overhaul them.

Turning squarely in toward the shore, Harvey and Joe Hinman soon reached it, jumped out, and drew the canoe far up on the beach. Their next move surprised the crew of the Spray. Leaving the canoe in full sight on the beach, Harvey and Joe Hinman walked deliberately away, without so much as looking back at their pursuers.

“That’s a mighty strange performance,” exclaimed George Warren. “I don’t understand that at all.”

There was no place to run the Spray in close to shore, so they rounded to some thirty feet out, and Tom and Bob, hastily throwing off their clothes, dived overboard and swam to the beach.

Tom was the first to reach the canoe; but, as he came upon it and turned it over, he uttered a cry of astonishment.

“They’ve fooled us this time, sure enough,” he said to Bob, who came panting up. “It isn’t our canoe.”

The canoe, in fact, was new.

It was enough like theirs to be its mate, both as to size and colour, but there was not a scratch upon it nor upon the paddles. The canoe could not have been used more than once or twice since it had left the maker’s hands.

“The joke is on us,” cried Bob to the boys in the Spray. “It’s another canoe. Harvey’s ‘governor,’ as he calls him, must have bought it for him and sent it down on the boat yesterday. He doesn’t seem to be afraid to trust us with his property, which is more than we would do with him.”

“Perhaps he would rather trust the canoe with us than to trust himself with all of us just at this time,” replied Tom. “I feel like taking it along with us, to make him give up our tent, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t do. We can’t prove that he has it, either.”

Harvey and Joe Hinman had clearly left the canoe to its fate, so there was nothing to do but to swim aboard the Spray again, and the voyage down the island was resumed.

“There’s one thing about it,” said Tom, as he scrambled into his clothing once more, “if Jack Harvey is as reckless and as careless in that canoe as he is in his yacht it will be washed up on shore some day without him. Not that I hope it will happen, but I look to see it.”

“I don’t think he was born to be drowned,” said Henry Burns.

Toward noon they came in sight of the southern extremity of the island, or the extremities, to speak more accurately, for the end of the island here was divided into a succession of thin points of land of various shapes, affording a number of small, rockbound harbours, snug and secluded, and each making good shelter for small vessels.

They selected one of these, and, as they knew the waters to be filled with a species of small cod, they determined to lay up here for the afternoon and night, starting out again the next morning. They brought the Spray well in to the head of the harbour which they selected, so that it was almost wholly land-locked when they dropped anchor and furled their sails.

Toward evening the wind decreased, dying out almost entirely. Big banks of clouds piling up in the northwest told them that they might expect the breeze from that quarter in the morning.

It was getting dusk and they were cooking their supper in the little cabin of the Spray, when young Joe, looking out of the companionway, exclaimed: “Why, here comes company; another yacht’s going to lie in here for the night, too.”

Looking out, they saw a big black sloop coming slowly into the harbour. She had come up from the southward before the wind, and had only her mainsail set. There was hardly breeze enough to bring her in. She drifted in slowly, with one man at her wheel, and, as she came within hailing distance, young Joe, going forward, swung his cap and shouted, “Ahoy.”

The man at the wheel did not respond, but, strangely enough, at the sound of young Joe’s voice the yacht slowly turned again, heading completely about, and stood out of the harbour again.

“Doesn’t seem to like our company,” said Henry Burns.

“Guess he’ll have to have it, whether he wants it or not,” said George Warren. “There’s not wind enough to take him out again, as he will find when he gets the set of the tide at the entrance.”

If the helmsman aboard the strange yacht had really intended to quit the harbour again, he found the tide to be as George Warren had said. After vainly trying to make out for a few moments, he left the wheel, ran forward, and the next moment they heard the splash of his anchor. Then the sail dropped and the man went below.

“Whoever they are aboard there, they don’t seem inclined to be sociable,” said Henry Burns. “Well, they don’t have to be, if they don’t want to.”

“Guess they’re afraid we’ll keep them awake,” said George Warren. “They are fishermen, by the looks. See, she carries no topmast, so she is not a pleasure yacht, though she looks from here like a fast boat. They make them good models now, since Burgess began it.”

“I guess that’s so,” said Arthur Warren. “Those fishermen like to sleep nights, after a hard day’s work, without being disturbed. I remember one night we laid up in a harbour and began singing college songs, and a crew of them rowed over to us and threatened to lick us if we didn’t keep quiet. This fellow doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I’ll hail him, anyway, if he comes on deck again,” said Henry Burns, “and find out where he is from. I like to know my neighbours.”

But the man aboard the strange yacht was not inclined to be neighbourly. He did not appear on deck again. A thin wreath of smoke curled out of the funnel in his cabin, and they knew he was getting a meal. That was the only sign of life aboard.

Sometime that night – he did not know the hour – Henry Burns awoke, conscious of some sound that had disturbed his light slumbers. Presently he became aware that it was the sound of a sail being hoisted. Getting up softly without disturbing his companions, he crept out of the cabin and looked across the water. The moon was shining, and he could see a lone figure aboard the strange yacht, getting the boat under way.

Henry Burns saw him go forward and labour for awhile at the anchor rope. Then, for a wind had arisen, the man ran aft to the wheel, and Henry Burns saw the strange yacht go sailing out of the harbour.

“That’s a queer thing to do,” muttered Henry Burns. “There’s something strange about it. He tried to get out before, the minute he saw us. Cracky! You don’t suppose – No, that’s nonsense. I’m getting altogether too suspicious ever since I came across that man Craigie upon the roof of the hotel.”