When Acey Smith left Amethyst Island he did not immediately head back for the pulp camp, but crossed over to the mainland opposite, where he beached the bow of his long, slender racer at the foot of a narrow trail that wound up into the densely wooded hills. Snubbing the boat to the shrubbery, he struck off up the trail and was gone for almost an hour.
Shortly after his form had been swallowed up in the bush, there appeared at the foot of the trail a tall, dark-bearded man in the garb of a preacher. He peered at the island from the screen of the bush, and there, concealed from view, squatted in the foliage with eyes upon the cottage, silent, immovable as a statue.
Josephine Stone came out upon the cottage steps and opened a book in her lap. If the figure in the woods noticed her he gave no sign.
After a long interval there came from out of the depths of the forest, far away, a low reverberating intonation as of some deep soft gong being struck. A few moments elapsed and the mellow note again swooned mystically over the wastes.
The faintest traces of a smile broke over the face of the man hidden in the bushes as the girl on the steps started to her feet and looked about her in bewilderment. She picked up her book and disappeared into the cottage.
Twice again with a short interval between there came a gonglike alarm from far up in the silent wastes. The black-bearded man rose at the sound of the last stroke of the gong. With patient caution he drew from the shrubbery a cached canoe, launched it and with silent strokes skimmed westward along the shoreline.
Twenty minutes later Acey Smith came striding down the trail, carrying on his back a partially filled woodsman’s packsack. At the foot of the trail he paused as though reading some sign in the sands of the beach. He swung the packsack from his shoulders into the cockpit of the boat, pushed off the craft and headed it toward the pulp camp docks.
There was a scowl on his face as black as a thunder cloud.