Slowly she crept forward, seeming to feel her way as she advanced, until the four standing on the quay could make out the three forms in her turret.
Then comprehension burst upon them!
“Good old Silas!” cried Seymour; “he’s got the drop on our bold conspirators this time.”
Garth laughed boisterously in his rapture at the recovery of his invention.
Through the dock gates the vessel crept to her old mooring-place. Almost ere the engines had ceased to throb, the four had leapt aboard, and were crowding into the turret.
Within a few moments the two uninjured rascals and their wounded chief were securely trussed, and locked away in one of the workshops, there to await removal to the local jail.
The body of the footman was laid upon the quay and covered with a sheet. Only when these matters were attended to would the American satisfy the curiosity of his friends as to the manner in which he had managed to turn the tables upon the boat-stealers.
“Where’s your watchman?” he asked, after dismissing the subject in half a dozen pithy sentences.
“You’ve locked him up,” Garth returned; “it was the fellow who steered you in. He must have been heavily bribed by the plotters. Had Wilson been here, this would not have happened, for he has been guarding the boat himself at night.”
“Where’s he gone?” asked the doctor.