“Well,” the Captain returned reflectively, “there’s Harvey Jarreth now. He has been sporting a lot of new clothes lately and has been getting money from somebody. There is no person about here complaining that Harvey has cheated him, so it must be coming from outside. He is bound that he will prove yet that he wasn’t fooled in that affair last summer, and we can’t tell just how far that folly will take him. There are other things, too, big and little, down to foot-tracks in my potato patch. But the last one is that yacht out there; she has gone by the Island three times already today, and I don’t like her looks. She may belong to some harmless, dirt-common millionaire, and then she may not. I know all of that kind of vessel that sails in these waters and she’s a new one to me.”
He adjusted the glass again and looked long at the moving speck and the wreath of smoke that trailed across the sea.
“I don’t like her,” he repeated, shaking his head, “and I’ve sent a message to that officer telling him so.”
Billy had a look at the vessel also, but could make nothing of her. To him she might have been any one of a thousand pleasure boats that plied those seas in summer time.
“Well, there is nothing to do but wait,” the Captain said at last, as the yacht disappeared and he closed the glasses into their case with a snap.
Wait they did through the length of a hot, sultry day. Aunt Mattie’s friendship for the Captain was even great enough to secure her forgiveness for his having called Billy out of church. The boy was sent up to the hotel with a great bunch of spring flowers as a peace offering, but, having delivered them, he went back to the cottage once more to spend the slow hours sitting on Captain Saulsby’s doorstep or walking restlessly up and down the garden.
What he was expecting, or what Captain Saulsby expected, he did not know at all; but whatever the possibilities were, for long hours nothing occurred. The sun disappeared under a cloud, the atmosphere grew hotter and heavier: it was plain that a storm was coming, although as yet there was no wind. Far out to sea the big bell-buoy was rocking in the uneasy swells, and ringing fitfully. The time passed, the afternoon darkened to twilight, the sun emerged a moment, then went down in a blaze of angry, coppery red, but still nothing happened. Perhaps Captain Saulsby had been quite mistaken.
It had grown quite dark and the church bells were ringing again for the evening service, but Billy was still sitting before Captain Saulsby’s door. Quick steps—they could be no other than Sally Shute’s—came across the garden, and the little girl stepped out of the dark and sat down beside him.
“Mother and Jacky have gone to church,” she said, “but I came over here to see the Captain. Is he sick again, or anything? Is something wrong?”
“No,” returned Billy with an effort, “No, nothing’s wrong.”