She looked over to Norwithel.
"There is no one to-day on Norwithel," said I.
"I shall find Peter Tortue on the Castle Down."
"But I crossed the Castle Down this morning----" and I suddenly stopped. There had been no one watching on the Castle Down. There was no one anywhere upon the watch to-day. The significance of this omission struck me then for the first time.
"What if already we are quit of them!" I cried. "What if that one tiny word Royal Fortune has sent them at a scamper into hiding?"
Helen caught something of my excitement.
"Oh! if it only could be so!" she exclaimed.
"Most like it is so," I returned. "No man cutting ore-weed upon Norwithel! No man lounging on the Castle Down! It must be so!" and we shook hands upon that likelihood as though it was a certainty. We started guiltily apart the next moment, for a servant came into the garden with word that Dick Parmiter had sailed round in a boat from New Grimsby, and was waiting for me.
"There is something new!" said Helen, clasping her hands over her heart, and in a second she was all anxiety. I hastened to reassure her. Dick had come at my bidding, for I was minded to sail over to St. Mary's, and discover if there was anywhere upon that island a record of the doings of the Royal Fortune. To that end I asked Helen to give me a letter to the chaplain there, who would be likely to know more of what happened up and down the world than the natives of the islands. I was not, however, to allow that I had any particular interest in the matter, lest the Rev. Mr. Milray should smell a rat as they say, and on promising to be very exact in this particular and to return to the house in time for supper, I was graciously given the letter.
I found the Rev. Mr. Milray in his parsonage at Old Town, a small, elderly man, who would talk of nothing but the dampness of his house since the great wave which swept over this neck of land on the day of the earthquake at Lisbon. I left him very soon, therefore, and went about another piece of business.